ellie 🍸

⛧ Ellie ☄️ 21 ⛧ ☄️ U.S. ⛧ english and journalism graduate ☄️incoming law student ⛧ she/her/hers ☄️ loves lavender, lana del ray, books, writing and a million other things ⛧ fav p project: fantastic four☄️

all dividers on this page are by @saradika-graphics

ao3 ⛧ pintrest ⛧ twitter ⛧ spotify ⛧ my dads website for writers!

Fics

I’ll find you in every cosmos (one shots included on masterlist)

Eyes upon me (in progress)

Purple Rain (in progress)

notes:

I do take requests for one shots. I will use my own discretion when it comes to what I will or will not write, but there aren't many things I won't write.

I do not have a posting schedule. I work full time and am starting law school soon so this is a side, passion project of mine. As of right now I try to update once a week.

Monday, September 2003. Joel. 

Joel was technically the “President” of Miller Construction, though he would always give Tommy most of the credit for the job even though he shit on him whenever he had the chance. 

Joel knew long ago that he was not a man for college. At least, right away. He came from a long line of blue collar men; his father, Scott, is a car mechanic, his grandfather was a meat cutter at the supermarket, his great-grandfather served most of his life in the army, and his great-great gradfather was a railroad track layer. 

It wasn’t like he had much desire to do anything that required a college degree anyhow. He liked two things in life - music and building. He wasn’t nearly good enough to pay all of that money to go to school for music, and all construction required was a little muscle. 

Scott Miller had been hopeful that Joel would take over his auto repair shop after high school. Joel and his best friend Bill had worked there as early as his dad could legally hire a teenager, but there was no passion there for him. In fixing broken things and just handing them back, especially since most of the cars he had to work on were from the wealthier families in Dallas. It seemed morally wrong to him that he was working on hot-shot business mens Mercedes without so much as a thank you for $2 an hour from his dad. 

Rich people were so ungrateful. 

He discovered construction when his 9th grade home-ec class volunteered to help a local construction group build homeless shelters in Balch Springs. At first he bitched and moaned about having to carry lumber around in the sweltering heat of Texas without any of his friends (they were in a different home-ec period) but once the project was finished and he watched more and more people get off the streets in the following weeks? 

Damn he felt good. 

Not in a pride boosting way where he felt like he could brag about doing something good. In fact, with construction, no one would ever know who built that shelter. His name and his class name was completely unattached. Just knowing that he could build things that changed someone's life drastically was extremely special to him. 

After school he worked at a local construction group, but they were far more focused on the companies that gave them big paychecks to build factories and powerplants and warehouses. Shit that hurt the planet and really did no good besides putting more money back to the rich man.  Some of his coworkers at the time were good at brushing over who they were working for and just getting the job done so they could afford their bills. 

But it was you who encouraged him to open his own company that specialized in building things that could help people. Like shelters, or apartments, or hell, even a small restaurant if that was someone’s life long dream that they worked toward. 

You were the one who saw how sad he became, even if he put a smile on his face. You were the one who told him that if you could follow your dreams of being a writer, he could follow his and open up his own company. You were the one who gave him a couple hundred bucks to buy the licensing to work as a contractor in Dallas. You were the one who gave him his first job remodeling your older brother's kitchen. 

The accident happened while he was still running everythin’ by himself, so you never knew that Tommy was the one who stepped in to run the business while Joel was recovering from his surgeries. He was 17 years old, not even graduated high school, and he was still helping out his brother's dream while he couldn’t. And he graduated high school with honors while doing it. 

Honestly, Joels younger brother was his life’s inspiration. That’s why he named Tommy VP of Miller Construction and that’s why he makes sure to remind everyone around him how great of a guy his brother is. 

Monday, September, 2003

You expected the first people to be in your classroom to be your students. Instead, you were faced with Karen. Again.

Your first thought was that she had noticed your shaking on the tour and wanted to talk to you about it, but then you remembered that this woman probably wouldn’t have noticed if you dyed your hair purple. Either way, you instincually gripped your hands tight behind your back in case they tried to act up at all, gripping them like handcuffs.

“Hey!” You cleared your throat, aware of how loud you just spoke. “Hey, um, where are the kids? It’s 8:32.”

Karen seemed completely unbothered, raising an eyebrow at the fact that you were even concerned at all.

“It’s only been 2 minutes since the bell rang. They’re still filing in from outside.”

At your old school, the kids would file in 10 minutes before the bell rang so you could start on time. Cultural shift, you suppose.

“Oh,” was all you could manage to say. “Can I help you with something else then?”

Your throat felt so dry, almost as if you had a sore throat. You really just gasped all of the air out of your lungs. It usually took a half hour to start feeling better.

She snapped her long fingers into the expanse of the hallway like she was gesturing toward something you were supposed to see. Her eyes closed as she was trying to find the words - had you noticed how long her eyelashes were? Those had to be extensions. They looked like spiders.

“Ah,” her eyes flew open and she remembered. “One of your students is in the library having an episode. Sarah Miller I think her name is?”

Your lips parted and you cocked your head at her jarring word choice, which was not helpful to you, or respectful to the student.

“What does ‘episode’ mean exactly?”

“Meltdown, panic attack, however you want to word it,” Karen waved her hand dismissivley. “If you want her in your class today, I would go get her so she’s not the library's problem until lunch.”

You should not have been the first person in line to help a child having a panic attack. Sure, you had walked children through meltdowns before, but that was months into school, after you already knew who they were. You were just a scary stranger to this little girl.

“Is the guidance counselor not available? I don’t know if I’m the best person to–”

“Rose has to sub for a 5th grade class today because the teacher is still on a family vacation. A pain, I know,” she seemed more inconvenienced that a teacher was on vacation rather than the fact that they were so understaffed that they needed their counselor to be a substitute.

If no one wanted to help this girl, you would help her. You brushed by Karen, hands still faintly shaking behind your back. But the minute you stepped into that library, your hands were at the back of your mind. Because there is always something bigger than yourself and your silly problems.

The library was bright, with floursenct lights blaring into your retinas. Maybe you were particularly sensitive to it with your migraines, but childrens brains are also sensitive. No wonder kids hate reading these days if these are the conditions that they’re stuck in.

Under a back table in the corner was a little girl with curly hair in two buns at the top of her head, dawned with little pink scrunchies. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her amber skin with tears streaked, indicating to you that this wasn’t just a fear of leaving her parents behind. This was full blown panic.

She was with an office administrator but no parent in sight. You stepped closer, your footsteps audible, but soft to not scare her.

“Her uncle brought her but he had to leave,” the administrator whispered, judgementally toward the uncle.

You couldn’t hide your scowl.

“Who leaves their niece having a panic attack?”

The adminstrator shrugged - this wasn’t a conversation to be had in front of a child. So, you sat on the carpet, with enough space between you and the girl in case she felt trapped and wanted to get out.

"It’s very quiet in here," you said softly, directed at the bookshelves rather than the girl. "I think the books like the quiet. It helps them sleep."

From under the table, the sobs hitched, like she hadn’t realized you came in. A pair of hazel eyes peered up at you from under the table. Her knuckles were white from how hard she was clawing at her shirt.

She looked…familiar.

But, you swallowed it down and focused.

“My name is Miss L/N.”

Her lip quivered and she clutched herself a little tighter.

“I-I don’t know how to say that.”

You gave a soft smile to her, reassuring her she wasn’t in trouble.

“Well that’s alright. You can call me Miss…or Teacher…whatever you want. I have a problem. See, my classroom is very big, and I have these special seats I was told were for very important people, but I can't find the person who’s supposed to sit in the front row. I think I’m a little lost."

She shook again.

“I d-don’t have a name on the glass…I’m n-not on the list.”

"Oh, the glass is for the people who like to look at windows," you said, dismissively tilting your head. "But I don't care about the glass. I have a special book in my room. It’s purple. And on the very first page, in the very best spot, it says 'Sarah Miller.' That’s the only list that matters today. That’s the only list that matters, ever.”

You saw her fingers loosen their grip on her collar just a fraction. You shifted, mirroring her tucked-in posture to show her you were on her level. If any random teacher walked by, you probably looked insane.

“Sometimes, I feel like I have a little bird trapped inside of me. Like a hummingbird, that kind that flaps its wings super fast. I feel it all over my body; in my head, in my belly, but mostly in my hands. Where do you feel your little bird?”

You watched her throat swallow hard, like she was taking medicine.

“Right here,” she pointed to her chest and you nodded to show her you understood.

“Exactly. I always tell that bird that it’s okay to be loud for a minute. Then I try to breathe like a slow fan. You took a long, exaggerated breath in through your nose and let it out through your mouth with a soft whoosh sound. "Can you help me move the air? Just a little bit? Birds need air to fly away.”

It took a moment. One second. Two. Then, Sarah imitated the sound, a shaky whoosh.

"There it is," you encouraged. "That’s a very good fan. Do you think we could do three more? And then, if you’re ready, you can come out and we can go find that purple book together."

"No rush, Sarah," you said firmly. "I'm not going anywhere."

Slowly, she began to uncurl. She crawled toward the edge of the table, her face blotchy and tear-stained. As she reached the edge, you simply held out your hand, palm up. When her small hand finally slipped into yours, the feeling of her trust was so overwhelming it nearly broke your professional mask.

"There you are," you whispered. "I've been waiting all morning to meet you sweet girl."

You kept your grip on her hand loose in case she wanted to drop your hand, but not so loose that she would feel like a burden for holding your hand.

The walk back to class was slow, but you didn’t really mind. An occasional tremor radiated through her hand, but the gasping stopped which was a good sign.

As you turned the corner toward your roommate, the hallway was no longer empty. The distant hum of twenty other 6 year olds echoed against the walls. Sarah’s grip tightened sharp enough that you winced briefly.

"It’s okay," you whispered, leaning down just enough so only she could hear. "Remember the bird? We’re just going to show the bird where the snacks are for later."

A tiny giggle escaped her, and the tension in her shoulder dropped an inch.

When you stepped through the door, the room was a whirlwind of commotion. The kids were looking around the reading rug, playing with the crayon stuffies, checking out their desks, and coloring with the paper you left out with some crayons while you got your tremors under control. They were so caught up in their own world, most of them didn’t even notice you walking in. A few of them turned their heads but you paid them no mind. You just walked her right over to her seat, where Eddie had drawn her name in beautiful block letters last week, along with a lion sticker you found at Staples. And of course, the purple book (it was a folder) with her name on it.

“You didn’t throw away my name,” she said softly and your heart broke that she was so thankful for the bare minimum. Then that heart break turned into anger at her parents who abandoned her in a moment of crisis. You were going to have a word with whichever parents showed up tonight for Back to School night about this.

“Of course not,” You traced a circle over her knuckles with your thumb, something...well, something he used to do to you to calm you down. “Would you like to sit down? I can teach everyone a bit more about the class. That might make you feel more comfortable.”

She nodded, letting go of your hand and sliding into her seat. You let out a slight exhale - she was okay. She was safe. And she was within your eye sight so you could watch her, not under a table.

You reached over to the chime you had purchased that was resting against the white board and dinged it. Practically all of the heads in the class turned, which was new. Usually it took your kids a few tries to understand what the chime meant.

“Good morning,” you said warmly. “You now all know the first rule of my classroom - this chime means that it’s time to drop what you’re doing and face me. I don’t like yelling and I know you all don’t like yelling so this is a good alternative.”

You stared at all of the gawking 1st graders. You always loved how awe struck they looked the first few days.

“Please find your seats and we’ll start our day.”

Once the shuffling of chairs and the squeak of sneakers subsided, the room settled into that expectant, heavy silence that only six-year-olds can produce. They watched you with wide, unblinking eyes, Sarah most of all. She was sitting so still, her fingers hovering over the edge of the purple folder as if she was afraid it might vanish if she looked away.

Your right hand started to thrum against your thigh a bit, less with anxiety and more with adrenaline. This was going well. You were good at your job.

“My name is Miss L/N,” you said once everyone was seated and looking at you. “But, I know that can be a little tricky to say and spell. So you guys can all me Miss or Teacher, or whatever makes you the most comfortable.”

You gave a little wink to Sarah - you didn’t want her to feel like she was the only one calling you something else.

"Now, before we talk about our class rules and introduce ourselves, I want to show you something," you continued.

You held out both of your hands in front of you. A couple kids leaned in when they noticed your fingers were fluttering. You saw Sarah’s eyes widen, her gaze darting from your hands to your face.

"Do you see how my hands are shivering a bit?" you asked with a smile.

A few kids nodded slowly. One boy in the back whispered, "Are you cold?"

"That’s a great guess! But I'm actually quite warm," you chuckled. "You see, sometimes my body gets a little bit of extra energy that it doesn't know what to do with. It’s like when you have a wiggly tooth, or when you feel like you need to run around the playground. My hands just like to shake sometimes."

You sat down on the edge of your desk, keeping your hands relaxed in your lap. This was the same talk you had given to all of your classes since you started teaching.

"It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't mean I’m sad or scared. It’s just a part of who I am. It’s my body’s way of saying it’s working hard. So, if you ever see me shaking a little bit, you don’t have to worry. It just means I’m excited to be here with you."

Not entirely true, but the tension in the room seemed to evaporate. To a group of six-year-olds, a teacher with shaky hands wasn't a medical mystery, just a cool quirk.

"In this room, we all have things that make us unique. Some of us might have wiggly hands. Some of us might have hearts that beat a little too fast sometimes."

You looked at Sarah, and for the first time, she gave you a genuine smile, one that didn't look like it was fighting through a layer of terror.

"Our second rule is that we take care of each other,'" you finished. "If someone is having a fast-heart day or a shajy day, we give them a little extra kindness. Does that sound like a good deal?"

A chorus of "Yes, Teacher!" echoed back. You mentally gave a little fist pump - they were so behaved already. This could be a good year if you made it.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

November, 1990

You should have said no to Joel’s party that he invited you to. Or, well, his friend Frank's party. You knew that you weren’t a party person, and that every time you tried to go to one, you lost every social skill you had and ended up cowering in a corner with a drink that tasted like rubbing alcohol. They were miserable for you, and you had decided after the last one you went to (you had a panic attack and cried), you would stop trying to force yourself to go to these things.

Except Joel Miller brought out a side of you that you didn’t know existed. Because you eagerly said yes without thinking when he asked you.

What was the matter with you?

You never, ever, let anyone get into your head and affect your decisions, not even the few people you had crushes on over the years. Not even your best friends. Not in a selfish, unadaptable way of course - you just knew who you were. You knew life was too short to put yourself in miserable situations in the name of just saying you were at the event.

There was something about Joel that changed that part of you. You had this desire that settle deep in your skin, a desire to be everything he wanted. You wanted him to see you and feel instantly happier, the same way you felt when you saw him. You wanted him to feel understood the same way he made you feel understood.

When Joel spoke to you, he made you feel important. He made you feel smart. He made you feel more than the girl who liked to read books and spend too long in the library. A lot of people around you were rather offput by how…nerdy you could be. You loved to talk about the things you were passionate about and you loved to hear other people talk about the things they were passionate about, but you learned that people were overwhelmed by that. But Joel treated it like a gift he was lucky to be near.

And God, the way he looked at you when he asked.

He hadn't been the "cool guy" in that moment like he was in high school. He wasn’t the one leaning back, oozing confidence and waiting for you to fall at his feet. He had been (dare you even think it?) nervous. His ears had turned that endearing shade of pink, and he had fidgeted with that book. If a guy like Joel Miller was willing to risk his pride just to spend a Friday night with you, how could you possibly stay home with your biographies?

Frank’s house smelled so badly of weed that you were surprised that the cops hadn’t been called yet. And it wasn’t like you didn’t enjoy the casual joint here and there, but wow…your nose was burning. Inside was loud enough that you felt like your skin was vibrating. When you walked in, you smoothed the fabric of your black jean skirt. You were wearing a cream colored top which you were now keenly aware looked a bit suggestive. You hadn't bought it to be provocative - you liked the texture and the way the sleeves hit your wrists - but now, surrounded by at least 100 people, the top clung to your curves in a way that felt suddenly intentional.

"Well, look at you," a gruff voice barked from the hallway.

You blinked, adjusting to the darkness, and saw Bill. You remembered what he looked like from school. He was leaning against a doorframe to another room, a bottle of beer in his hand and a look on his face that suggested he’d been born annoyed. But when his eyes landed on you, his eyebrows shot up. He didn't offer a "hello,” but instead, he turned his head toward the kitchen.

"Miller! Quit hoverin' over the keg! Your girl’s here!"

Your girl. You had to take a step backward and inhale deeply. You felt…warm, suddenly. It was probably just all of the people in here. Yeah. It was all the people.

It was dark, but you knew the moment Joel appeared. He pushed through a cluster of guys laughing about some truck repair, a red solo cup held in his hand. He looked incredible, but even that wasn’t the right word. He was wearing a dark, unbuttoned flannel over a grey t-shirt, sleeves shoved up to reveal the heavy muscles of his forearms, probably from lifting wood and bricks all day. He was clearly a few drinks in; he was stumbling just a bit, a big goofy grin on his face, and a warmth in his eyes that told you he was feeling the buzz.

But the second he saw you, he stopped dead.

His gaze swept over you, stalling for an obvious moment on the line of your top before snapping back up to your face. He looked completely floored, but you told yourself it was just the alcohol in his system. He probably was processing who was standing in front of him.

For a man who usually moved so effortlessly, he suddenly looked like he’d forgotten how his legs worked. His jaw tightened, his throat working in a hard swallow as he took in the sight of you outside of the library.

"Hey," he said, his voice raspy and slightly hoarse - he was probably smoking a cigarette earlier. It made your knees feel like water. "You... you actually came."

"I kept my promise, Miller," you said, having to step closer to be heard over a sudden burst of laughter nearby.

"Yeah. Yeah, you did." He smiled and chewed at his lower lip. "You look... you look real nice. More than nice. I think I’m havin' a hard time rememberin' what I was talkin' about before you walked in."

It was so bold of him you froze and tilted your head. But before you could say anything, he reached out, his hand hovering near your waist for a second before he gestured toward the kitchen. "Come on. Let's get you something to drink before Bill finishes everything worth havin'."

He led the way, his hand finally settling on the small of your back. It was so faint you didn’t think much of it.

He was probably just being polite and helping to guide you through the mob of people. He didn't ask what you wanted; he reached past a stack of pizza boxes and grabbed a bottle, mixing a drink that was purposefully light on the alcohol. He knew your limits without you ever having to state them, therefore protecting you from the rubbing-alcohol taste of the "jungle juice" sitting in a basin on the counter.

"Try that," he leaned his shoulder against the refrigerator so he could look down at you. "Not too strong."

You took a sip and smiled. "It's perfect. How’d you know I don’t like strong drinks?"

"I pay attention.”

He didn’t pull back after you took your first sip. Tipsy Joel was different than he usually was. He didn’t reach for you, but as you talked, his shoulder would linger against yours just a second too long, or his forearm would "accidentally" brush yours as he reached for his own drink. He was a man who found comfort in touch.

"I’m surprised you came. Thought you were too smart for these parties. You gonna tell me all about how this party is just a bunch of people tryin' to escape the 'existential dread' of a Friday night?"

You laughed, the sound bubbling up easier than it ever did when you were sober. "Existential dread is more of a Sunday afternoon thing. Tonight is just... loud." You tilted your head, looking up at him. "I didn't think you were the party type, Miller. I figured you'd be under a truck somewhere."

"Usually, I am," he admitted, his thumb hooking into the belt loop of his jeans. He shifted closer, his thigh grazing the side of your skirt. "But Bill and Frank always throw these and they don't take 'no' for an answer. And besides... I heard a rumor a certain smart girl might show up."

"Is that so? This the same girl you invited?"

"Mmhmm." He slurred a little and reached out, his knuckles dragging down the length of your sleeve, tracing the ribbed knit from your shoulder to your elbow. His eyes never left yours. "Had to see if she’d actually wear somethin' other than a hoodie. Wanted to see all of her."

"And?" your heart started racing. "Is the verdict in?"

Joel’s gaze flickered down to the line of your top again which made you realize that this wasn’t just him being tipsy and friendly. No…no, drunk actions are sober thoughts. He didn't say anything for a moment, just let his hand rest against your arm.

"Verdict is," he leaned in just enough that you could catch the scent of him; cigarettes and vanilla. "that I’m havin' a real hard time focusin' on the conversation."

He started talking about a book he’d picked up because he saw you reading it, but you felt almost dizzy. It was something about the history of the frontier, and the way he described the parts he liked was surprisingly thoughtful. He didn't just read it; he understood it.

"You're full of surprises," you teased softly.

"Only for you," he countered. Fuck, he was smooth with it. He reached up, his index finger tracing the very edge of your jaw before tucking a stray hair behind your ear. It was tender and it felt far too intimate for a kitchen full of people.

Suddenly, the speakers in the living room hissed, and the beat of Prince’s "Kiss" cut through the air.

Your eyes lit up and you beamed as you recognized the beat. "Oh, no way. I love this song."

Joel didn't move. He just watched you and the way your head tilted, the way your teeth caught your bottom lip as you started to sway.

"I know," he muttered, his hand on the counter shifting until his palm was flat against your hip, drawing you just an inch closer. "I think everyone in a five-mile radius knows how much you love Prince."

"Is it that obvious?" you laughed, leaning into him.

"Only because I'm lookin'.”

He didn't pull away; he just kept his hand right there on your hip, his thumb tracing small, slow circles against the black fabric, watching you with a look that said he wasn't thinking about books anymore.

He reached up, his hand slightly shaky as he ran his fingers through the hair at the nape of your neck. He didn't just touch it; he let the strands slip between his fingers. His hands were so calloused they scraped your skin a bit, but it made your core heat up. You liked that he was a man who ued his hands.

"You know, you usually have it all tied up. Hidden away."

He stepped a fraction closer, his chest nearly brushing the front of your top. He used his thumb to gently push a stray lock away from your face.

"You should wear it down more," he whispered. “I like it like this. It suits you."

The air between you seemed to vanish. He didn't wait for a reply, and you couldn't have given one if you tried. He simply slid his hand further into your hair, his fingers cupping the back of your head to steady you as he leaned in.

When his lips finally met yours, it was everything the movies promised but never quite captured. It was slow, like a camera was trying to capture the exact moment your lips met. There was nothing rushed or messy about it like your other kisses. It was deep, exchanging words through your mouth.

His other hand found your back, pulling you flush against him until you could feel the pounding of his heart against your own. He tasted like cigarettes and alcohol and sweetness and everything that was right in the world. It made the roar of the party outside the kitchen fade into an unimportant hum.

When he finally pulled back, he didn't go far. He kept his forehead pressed against yours, his fingers still tangled in your hair, both of you breathing in the same shared space.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Monday, September 2003

Not only did the school want back to school night to happen on the first day, but you learned a few days before work started that teachers were expected to begin doing reading and math placements on the first day. In your experience, testing was done after a day or two to let the kids aclimatize back into a school setting. Doing it on the first day was just asking them to fail and not get an accurate result.

You assigned the kids to decorate their name tags and folders while you called each kid one on one to your desk. Most of the kids so far were right on track with Grade 1 reading standards, at least, based on the sheet they wanted you to go off of. 0-1 errors meant an additional placement test for a higher level, between 2-6 errors meant traditional Grade 1 placement, and 8+ errors meant a Kindergarten level or below. You had more freedom at your old job to recommend a child who had 6 errors to receive Kindergarten level work since they were right on the cusp of being behind. Now, it was follow the guidelines exactly. State rules.

Welcome to state funded education.

Most of the kids were doing right on benchmark, and two were reading above grade level; David Fernandes and Ashley Dadford. You marked them down and made a note to do that additional placement test for them. Three kids were reading below grade level; Joshua Austin, Stephanie Field, and Lauren Galley, but that wasn’t enough to worry you really. Statistically, kids don’t test well the first month back to school, so that wasn’t enough to alarm you.

And then there were some students like Michael Akhurst–Mikey. He was a tall, lanky kid who was pretty quiet. None of his Kindergarten friends were in his class. But he seemed to click really well with Brody Kauffeld and the two of them have been talking nonstop once they met.

“Ok Mikey,” you swivled your chair to face him. “I just need you to read some words for me and then a few sentences.”

“Is this a test?”

“No, no, not that kind of test. This is just to help me understand how you read so that I know the best way to teach you.”

His dark eyes flickered over the booklet on your desk.

“So I don’t get a grade?”

"No grades at all," you promised. Anxiety over grades at such a young grade is never a good sign. "Just read the letters and words you know. If you hit one that feels too tricky, it's totally okay to skip it. Ready?"

He gave an almost solem nod, locking his eyes onto the first section of the Direct Instruction placement sheet. You slid a blank index card down to isolate the first row of lowercase letters. Mikey took a breath, pointed his small finger, and began.

"a... m... t... s..."

As Mikey steadily navigated through the letter sounds, your hand slid the index card row by row.

"...the... cat... sat... on... the... m-m-m... mat," Mikey read, his voice a bit shaky as he carefully blended the phonetic sounds.

"Perfect. Keep going, you're doing beautifully," you murmured, checking off his progress. He was a slam dunk; zero errors on the isolated sounds, only one minor hesitation on a sight word.

Your mind drifted to Camilla as you switched Mikey's booklet to the next tier of sentences. She would have had an absolute fit if she saw this assembly-line testing.

Camilla had been the head reading interventionist at your previous private school, and also, your best friend. She was a brilliant woman with two - two! - Masters degrees who could diagnose a phonological processing deficit from across a crowded cafeteria. \

You two had become practically inseparable over the years, and by proximty, you learned a lot about reading theories. You had learned more about true reading mechanics, orthographic mapping, and decoding strategies from Camilla than you ever had from your graduate-level textbooks. She was the one who taught you to watch a child's jaw tension, to note if they were guessing by the shape of the word rather than sounding it out.

You hadn't heard from her since you moved back home to Texas.

See, your car accident wasn’t the only accident that derailed your life. Back in April, your brain decided to add another side effect that you were told wouldn’t happen:

Seizures.

Seizures are common with DAI patients, but you had steered pretty clear of showing signs of a seizure disorder. Your neuroogist had said that after 2 years, your risk of having seizures while your brain heals diminishes rapidly. 7 years had passed since the initial accident, so you should have been in the clear. The doctor didn’t even bring them up anymore as a risk factor.

And then, on a Thursday night while you were cooking a grilled cheese, you collapsed, waking up with blood in your mouth from biting your tounge too hard, brain fog, and a kitchen on fire.

You didn’t find out what happened until you were brought to the ER and they told you you had a seizure. But you didn’t remember any of it. It was before and after, just like the car accident.

You had woke to a world that was orange. Your first sensation wasn't the heat, but the agonizing pulse in your mouth. You tried to swallow, but the copper taste was back, which you recognized as blood. You spat onto the linoleum, a dark spray of crimson hitting the floor. You had bitten your tongue so hard it felt cleaved in two.

Your brain was a bowl of gray wool. You looked at the ceiling, wondering why the white paint was being swallowed by clouds of black.

Fire.

The word didn't register as a danger; it was just an observation. You watched the flames lick playfully at the underside of the cabinets, fueled by the butter that had long ago hit its flash point.

The smoke detector finally screamed and tore through the post-seizure fog. You tried to push yourself up, but your limbs were uncoordinated, as if the DAI had crawled out of its seven-year grave to reclaim your motor skills.

You managed to get yourself into the hallway and called the fire department, and then Cami, who immediately knew something had happened regarding your brain injury due to how you were slurring your words. She was the one who took you to the ER and never left your side. She was the one who held your hand while you cried after the doctor told you that it would be unsafe for you to live alone now that seizures had come into the picture. She was the one that had had offered her home, practically demanding you move into her guest room so she could help take care of you.

"We'll figure it out," she had said, her voice fiercely protective. "You already are at my place every day…this will be fun. We’ll make it work."

But you had felt like a dead weight. Right when you finally felt like you had some control over your condition, another unpredictable, severe side effect was thrown into the picture. It was never ending. You couldn't let your closest friend turn into a full-time caregiver. So, you chose the pride of independence, broke your lease, and fled back to the Texas humidity where your roots were. Theo and Eddie lived together; if anything happened, the burden wasn’t all on one of them.

"The... big... red... b-boat... sailed... away," Mikey finished, looking up at you with a shy, proud grin, but you had been spacing out the entire time.

You shook your head to snap out of it and grinned.

"You did it, Mikey! Look at that. Only one error. Do you wanna go grab Sarah for me?”

He practically bounced out of the chair, his lanky legs eating up the distance back to Sarah’s desk. She was drawing a butterfly on her name tag and you couldn’t help but notice how intricate it was, especially for a 6 year old. She had details on it, and appropriate coloring, and evenly sized and shaped wings. Most kids would have scribbled an orange blob.

Sarah jolted when Mikey tapped on her and you frowned slightly. A lot of the kids' social barriers were slowly breaking down over the day, but Sarah seemed to be the only student who had not spoken to anybody if not prompted first. Obviously it takes time for kids to get comfortable, but the incident this morning had put Sarah on your radar with red alarms blaring.

She didn't look at him, just keeping her eyes fixed on that butterfly, her fingers white-knuckled around her crayon. It took her a long moment to stand up, smoothing her skirt over and over again, almost like an anxious tic.

“Hi Sarah,” you smiled, trying to be welcoming. “How’re you feeling?”

She gave a nervous, faint smile,

“Much better…I liked decorating my folder. My Kindergarden teacher didn’t let us color on our supplies last year.”

Some teachers were…older. Which was a nicer way of describing them. They didn’t believe school was a fun place and had very rigid rules to follow. You remembered your cranky old Kindergarden teacher, Mrs. Casey, who made the boy stand in the trash can after he thought he was allowed to throw away a paper without asking.

Sarah must have had one of those types of teachers - no wonder she had such anxiety coming into school.

“Well, I’m a big fan of color here. You’ll never see me wearing or having anything that doesn’t have one color from the rainbow.”

Sarah’s eyes flickered to the test on your desk and then back to you before sitting down in the seat across from you.

“This should only take a few minutes,” you explained quickly, before she spiraled. “It’s just some questions for you to answer so I can see what your reading level is and how I can teach you best. Not graded.”

You paused to let her answer, but she still looked hesitant.

“Do you read a lot at home with your parents?”

She gave a shrug, her eyes darting to the side a bit.

“It’s just my dad, but he works really late. We try and read together but he’s not really around most days.”

You frowned, eyebrows furrowing. You already weren’t a fan of her uncle earlier from when he left her having a panic attack, but now she was telling you that her dad wasn’t around?

“That’s okay,” you reached out and gave her hand a little pat. “Why don’t we start so you can get back to coloring?”

She scooched her chair forward and you opened the first page of the booklet, showing several lowercase letters to test her phonics.

Sarah leaned forward, her eyebrows narrowing as she focused. She stared at the letter a. Seconds ticked by.

"Take your time," you encouraged gently, even though you were starting to get worried.

"Is it... is it a d?"

An alarm buzzed in your head. A reversal, or a total misidentification of a high-frequency vowel.

"Not quite. That’s an a, like apple. Let's try the next one."

Her finger moved to the m. She stared at it so hard without blinking that her eyes started to water. "It's... it's a bumpy one. W-Wiggly?" She looked up at you, completely lost. "The lines are jumping. They’re swimming around."

Camilla’s voice echoed in your head, pointing out the classic markers of visual processing and tracking issues. Swimming lines. Letter reversals. This basic first-grade baseline test was immediately flagging her as a child who likely had dyslexia.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," you said quickly, snapping out of your own panic. "The lines are printed pretty small. Let's try this section instead."

You flipped the page to the isolated sight words, skipping the letters entirely to see if her brain was attempting to whole-word guess based on context or shape. You pointed to the word cat.

Sarah inhaled, trying so hard to please you it broke your heart.

"A... t... c?" she guessed, reading the letters completely backward. The next word was the, and she whispered, “h-het?”

The struggle with diagnosing dyslexia is differentiating between a student struggling to read and a student who is having a breakdown of phonological decoding. She wasn't just behind; she was displaying undeniable, glaring signs of dyslexia. The text on the page was a moving, unstable image to her.

Eight errors. You hadn't even made it through the first section of the basic placement, and she had already blown past the failure threshold. According to the rigid, uncompromising state rubric sitting in your binder, Sarah Miller didn't just fail this test; she belonged on a Kindergarten or below intervention track. Now you had to report your concerns to the administration, and well…knowing who was running the school didn’t make you very hopeful.

You stared at the page, your hand starting to flutter with an angry tremor. This deeply sensitive little girl was going to be completely crushed by a system that defined her by a rigid matrix on day one. And her parents, or well, dad, clearly hadn't a clue, or worse, hadn't advocated for her to get the proper support before shoving her into a public school classroom.

Maybe he was coming to Back to School night. That’s it. You could talk to him about this tonight.

“Alright Sarah girl, we are all done,” you closed the book. “Is your dad coming to Back to School night tonight? I would love to meet him.”

“I think so! He said he’d meet me after school today after his work.”

What did this man do for work that was so important that he couldn’t read with his daughter?

You leaned into your palm.

“What does your daddy do for work?”

Her eyes lit up slightly when she talked about her dad. Despite him not being very attentive, he clearly had formed a strong bond with his daughter. Though, in your experience, most children of single parents become attached to them because they are the only adult of comfort they have left. Most of your students who had attachment problems and struggled with coming to school in the morning were children who had single parents or divorced parents.

“He builds things,” she nodded fast like it was the coolest thing ever. “He builds big houses and apartments and restaurants. Daddy told me everyone loves builders.”

That one sentence felt like ice being dropped down your back. Your tremor, which had begun moments earlier, quickened slightly on the desk, so you cupped it with your other hand.

Everyone loves builders.

You felt his lips ghost over your ear, pressing a faint kiss below your lobe as you giggled and squealed in his grip.

Everyone loves contractors, baby.

What the fuck.

“That is such a cool job!” you plastered on your work smile and gripped your quivering hand even tighter.

You should ask her his name. It would clear your mind and let you finish your first day at work without a fucking panick attack in front of the 6 year olds. Clear it up now. Her last name is Miller, her dad works in construction, and-

No, no, no, no. Dragging a child into your past with her *potential* father is so inappropriate. And inconsiderate, mind you. Sarah was such a sweet little girl who was likely about to get hit with a diagnosis that would shape her future education.

This was probably all just a big fucking coincidence. As you pointed out when you first got the class roster, Miller is a very common last name. And in Dallas, 90% of men were plumbers, electricians, or construction workers. That’s not new.

Your brain was fucking with you. That was it. It was fucking with you like it always did.

"Go ahead and head back to the rug, Sarah girl," you said, your voice a little tighter than you wanted it to be, though you smoothed it over with a quick nod.

She smiled and padded back to her desk.

You stared at her folder for a long five seconds. A builder. Miller. Dallas. It was a statistical probability, you told yourself. A massive city and a blue-collar state. It was just a coincidence. You gripped the edge of your desk, took a long breath in through your nose, and stood up. You needed a second out of this room before you started suffocating, and more importantly, you needed to know what the protocol was for a kid who couldn't read a single letter.

You peeked your head out into the hallway and caught the eye of Jen Crenshaw, a fellow first grade teacher who you hadn’t gotten the chance to speak to much. She was a middle aged woman with dark brown hair and matching dark eyes. Her lanyard was customized with her name on it.

"Hey," you whispered, gesturing to your room. "Can you keep an eye on mine for two minutes? I need to run to the office."

"Go ahead, honey. First-day bladder, I get it," she chuckled, waving a hand.

You didn't go to the bathroom. You marched straight down the hallway toward the main administrative office. Your professional brain had taken back the wheel. Coincidence or not, Sarah Miller couldn't decode text, and you needed to know who was on the literacy team at this school so you could get her screened immediately. Camilla had always told you that early intervention in the first few weeks of first grade was the difference between a kid catching up or drowning for the next twelve years.

You pushed open the doors of the front office. Karen was sitting behind the counter, a large styrofoam cup of Diet Coke in her hand, lazily flipping through a catalog for school spirit wear. She didn't even look up when the bell above the door jingled.

"Karen," you said, stepping up to the counter.

Karen slowly raised her eyes, her spider-like eyelash extensions fluttering as she took a slow sip from her straw.

"Hiya hon. Shouldn't you be doing your baseline testing? I thought the big-shot northern schools taught time management."

She laughed but it was clearly a dig at you, which you ignored.

"I am doing the testing. In fact, I just finished with Sarah Miller. She has severe phonological decoding issues, visual tracking problems, and clear letter reversals. She's displaying every textbook marker for dyslexia."

Karen let out a short, ugly sound that was half-scoff, half-laugh. She leaned back in her swivel chair, shaking her head like you'd just told her a bad joke.

"Dyslexia?" Karen chuckled, waving her long fingers dismissively. "Honey, it's the first day of first grade. The girl is probably just lazy or slow. Give her a flashcard."

"It's not laziness, and she isn't slow," you felt your face burning at how poorly this woman spoke about other kids. "She's seeing static text as moving images. It's a fundamental neurological processing issue. I need to speak with the school's reading interventionist, or whoever handles your specialized literacy screenings. I want to get the paperwork started today so we can get a formal diagnosis."

"Let me stop you right there, Professor. Do you think you’re still at your fancy private school up north? Do you think we have a budget for 'literacy teams' and 'specialized screeners'?" She laughed right in your face. "We don't do that shit here."

"What do you mean you don't do that? It's a public school. State guidelines mandate-"

"State guidelines mandate that if she fails the placement, you put a 'K' on her file and you give her Kindergarten worksheets," Karen snapped, becoming defensive. "We don't have a reading interventionist. We have me, a vice principal who handles discipline, and a guidance counselor. We don't diagnose kids, because a diagnosis means the district has to pay for special accommodations, and we don't have the money. So, you're going to follow the rubric, put her on the low track, and move on to the next kid."

The anger that flared in your chest was so hot it physically made your head throb. You felt the familiar, violent flutter in your left hand, and you quickly balled it into a fist against your thigh.

"So your solution is to just let a 6 year old suffer because it's cheaper?" you whispered, your eyes narrowed.

"My solution is for you to do your job and stop trying to save the world on a Monday morning. If the parents want a diagnosis, they can pay thousands of dollars to take her to a private clinic in downtown Dallas. But considering her file says her dad is a self-employed contractor who moves from site to site, I doubt he's got 'private child psychologist' money lying around. Now, go back to your room."

Contracter. Moves from site to site.

"Well, how do I get this girl a diagnosis through the school then?" you pushed, your voice tight. "There has to be a process. A parent request, a formal evaluation team—"

"There is a process," Karen sighed, bored. "The parent signs a waiver requesting a district evaluation, it goes into a pile at the central office, and maybe, if they're lucky, a specialist comes out by next May to look at her. But like I said, guys like that don't usually care enough to sign the paperwork. They just think their kid is a little behind. We're done here. Don't you have a Back to School Night to prepare for?"

You didn't say another word. If you stayed in that office for one more second, you were going to say something that would get you fired before your first paycheck cleared. You turned on your heel and walked out.

Self-employed contractor. Works late. Uncle involved in family life.

You stopped right outside your classroom door, pressing your forehead against the cool cinderblock wall of the hallway. Your hands were shaking so violently now that you couldn't even hide it.

Everyone loves builders, baby.

"It's a coincidence," you whispered to the empty hallway, your voice cracking. "It has to be a coincidence."

But deep down, in the part of your brain that you couldn't trick with statistics, you knew exactly who was going to walk through that door tonight.

ongoing

taglist (open): @happilymagicallady @mystickittytaco @vickie5446 @din-cognito @pascalgold @cuteanimalmama @zeebmaster @eviispunk @somedayheaven @twilightvelour @callmebyyournick-name @onlythehobi

You didn’t sleep that night. 

Part of you wanted to turn around and walk straight out the doors of the palace and down to his own. Down to his sisters home. Down to his nephews home. You wanted to beg him to tell you that your father was lying, to shake him by his collar and make him tell you the truth. That he didn’t lie to your face. That he didn’t order his men to let you continue to be raped because you were some worthless palace girl. 

You wanted to grab one of his precious guns and shoot him clean in the head.

You wanted to beat him to a pulp so badly that his eyes were swollen shut the same way yours were. You wanted him to bleed so much that he couldn’t tell from what cavity it was coming from. You wanted to strangle him so he knew what it was like to feel the heat building up his body until it explodes in his brain. 

You wanted him to beg for mercy and cry on his hands and knees. You wanted him to gently touch your thigh the way he did when he was helping you calm down. You wanted him to taste you for hours, not for his own pleasure, but entirely to make you feel good so that you would forgive him. In fact, you hoped that he would get back pain while he was going down on you.

Despite everything you wanted, once your body became too weak to cry anymore, you stood up, and floated to your chambers, completely unattached to your body. You felt like a ghost again, hanting the galls of this palace. But when you pushed open the heavy doors to your bedchamber, the room wasn't empty.

Karoline was pacing the floor, faster than a woman her age should be walking. Having known you all 24 long years of your life, she could read the slightest shift in your posture, and she had noticed the King waiting at the side entrance himself. She knew what your fathers presence meant.

The moment she saw your face and the dried tracks of tears, she gasped, rushing toward you and locked the doors behind you.

"What happened?" Karoline whispered, her hands reaching out to steady your shoulders. "What did he do to you? Did he find out?"

The words flew out of you, and yet, completely monotone. You felt completely bare in front of the woman who was more of a mother to you then your own ever was. You told her everything. You told her that it was Ludovica, her trainee, who had snitched to your father. You told her how Ludovica had spied on you through the door, catching you and Marcus sleeping together. 

Karoline’s face contorted in a way that only a mother could when her child was hurt. Rage burrowed beneath her skin, sadness in the way her eyebrows raised and lips frowned. 

 "Ludovica..." she exhaled, holding back her rage.  "I brought that child into your inner circle. I swore she was safe. I taught her… and she used it to... to sell you to your father..."

But her anger faded as your continued to speak and was instead replaced with dread. Your monotone cracked slightly as you revealed what your father had told you about France. About the rescue mission. About Marcus holding his men back from saving you. 

Karoline’s face drained of absolute color, not that she had much anyway. She spent an awful lot of time inside. For a long moment, she just stared at you, trying to figure out what to say. No one expected this from him. The anger she felt for Ludovica burned away like a match into a fury directed entirely at Marcus.

"That treacherous, coward…dog! He is a dog!," Karoline hissed, her fingernails digging into her own palms so hard they nearly drew blood. "He looked me in the eye while we planned your escape while he carried that... that filth in his past! I will kill him myself. I will tear him apart with my own hands-"

"No! No. My father is letting him live. If I stay, i-f I marry Thomas."

Karoline stopped rambling, her chest heaving. Her eyes welled up. She looked at you - the little girl she had protected from your father's cruelty - and all of her emotions melted into sadness.

She didn’t try and argue with you now. Instead, she just gathered you into her arms, pulling your head against her shoulder. She held you tightly, rocking you like she did when you were little as you finally began to shudder against her chest.

 Quietly, she began to undress you, unlacing your dress. She wiped the sweat and ttear from your skin with a damp cloth, and brushed out your tangled hair, braiding it loosely before guiding you into the silk sheets of your bed.

Karoline climbed onto the mattress beside you, ignoring the protocol that forbade her from laying with you. She wrapped her arms back around you, resting her chin against the crown of your head, and inhaled slowly, trying to guide your breathing.

"Breathe, my girl, just breathe. You are behind locked doors. Marcus is not in this room. It’s just you and me. Always."

You had a delayed reaction to the sheer volume of trauma that had been forcibly crammed into your veins over the last hour. All that came out of you was a pathetic hitch that made Karoline squeeze you tighter. She began to stroke your back.

"Let it go…let it out.”

You buried your face into the crook of her neck, your fingers clawing at the fabric of her bodice as you sobbed so hard your stomach ached. You cried for everything in your life. Your neglected childhood, your cruel family. You cried for the girl who was a spy the moment she became an adult, and the girl who was beaten daily for years. You cried for the girl who finally had a safe escape and lost it. 

Karoline didn't offer hollow condolences. She didn't tell you everything would be alright, because she knew it wouldn’t be. She absorbed your grief into her own skin until the violence of your sobbing slowly began to de-escalate. Your grip on her gown loosened, your fingers going slack against her chest.

Karoline waited until your body became completely still before using the edge of her sleeve to wipe the fresh tears from your cheeks. You couldn’t help but admire her at this moment. It was Karoline who kept you alive all of these years with her kindness and intelligence. 

"Good girl" she said cooed. "Your mind is back with me. Now, listen to me very carefully."

She leaned in closer, her breath calmingly warm against your forehead.

"Your father laid his trap perfectly. He has used Marcus’s cowardice to chain you to Thomas, and he has used Marcus’s life to ensure your obedience. He thinks he signed your death wish, but he forgets who raised you. He forgets that you survived the trenches because you learned how to watch the enemy's formation before you struck. Look at me."

You forced your eyelids open.

"We know the truth now. But Marcus is still out there, completely unaware that you have found him out. He thinks he is coming back to his post on Monday. He thinks he is still driving your carriage to the border."

She leaned back just enough to look you dead in the eye. 

"Tell me what you want to do. Do we let your father have his victory? Do we let Marcus walk away, holding onto the guilt for what he did to you?  How do you want to play this?"

The violent urges you had earlier, like the desire to shoot him, to strangle him, to see him bleed, gradually settled into a ticking bomb in your chest. The rage hadn't left you, it jut turned into something far more calculated. 

"I need to look at him. Look him in the eye and make him admit it.”

Karoline frowned. 

 "He lives in the city. If you send for him tonight, your father’s eyes will see the messenger."

"No. Not tonight," you said, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of your lips. You pushed yourself up against the pillows. "Tomorrow is Monday, and every Monday morning, while the court is at early mass, I sneak down to the armory post. He leaves the side door unlatched for me. He stays there under the pretense of cleaning his rifles, just so we can have twenty minutes alone.."

Everything you once brushed past about him now hit you with a wave of disgust. Cleaning his rifles. The very weapons he had ordered to remain silent while you were being raped.

You were never going to be able to look at anything the same. 

"Tomorrow morning, the side door will stay locked, and I won't be there. And Marcus... Marcus is a man of habit, but he is also hyper-vigilant. When the mass bells finish ringing and I haven't appeared, he’s going to panic.:

You swallowed back the vomit in your throat.

"He won't be able to help himself. He still has his master key to the servants' stairwell. By mid-morning, when the halls clear for the midday council, he will come straight to these chambers to see what’s wrong. He thinks he knows exactly how to quiet me. He thinks a gentle touch on my thigh and a few whispered promises will fix whatever is wrong." You turned your head to look at Karoline. "I don't want my father to cut his heart out tomorrow. I want to do it myself. I need him to know that I know."

Karoline nodded slowly, reaching up to smooth down a few stray hairs from your forehead. 

"Then we wait for morning," Karoline whispered, her voice a steady, chilling promise. "I will stay by the door to make sure no one comes in before Marcus."

You nodded, finally letting your head sink back into the pillows, though you didn't close your eyes. You just stared at the ceiling, counting the hours in the dark.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ .

You didn’t wake up so much as you simply drifted into a conscious awareness of the empty cavity where your heart used to be. You felt mentally destroyed. Absolutely, completely, utterly, empty. The bedsheets felt like weights pinning you down on all sides, and the thought of even shifting your weight made your stomach churn. 

Karoline had been true to her word, as expected, but it still dulled your depression slightly to know that you had one person who would stand up for you like this. You could hear the muffled, yet sharp orders she barked to the royal physicians and the court stewards. She pushed off your history lessons, canceled your high-priority fitting for the wedding gown, and claimed your melancholy had taken a turn so severe that even the King had ordered you left entirely undisturbed. 

Hours dissolved into the shadows of the room. The palace bells rang for early mass - you didn’t move. You envisioned the armory post down below and Marcus standing in the dark, checking his pocket watch.

He was always checking his watch wasn’t he? Always making sure it was the right time.

You could just end it. You could slip past Karoline, climb the stone steps to the very top of the palace, and let the high wind take you over the edge. You could throw yourself into the stones below and finally force the world to be quiet. You could escape the King, escape your brother, escape your mother, escape Thomas, and never have to look into the lying eyes of Marcus ever again. It would be so simple to let your body shatter on the courtyard below, to let the blood spill out and take the secrets with it. It would be a mercy.

The doors to your chambers didn’t just open - they barged inward, the brass latch groaning against the wood as it struck the wall. Hours must have gone by without you even realizing.

And there Marcus stood, his breathing ragged like he ran here. He was completely disheveled, his hair was windswept, his collar was crooked, and his eyes were wide.

He didn’t notice the tension in the room. He only saw you, motionless in the center of the bed.

"My love" he gasped out, slamming the door shut behind him and threw the iron bolt. He stumbled forward, his leather boots clicking. "The mass bells ended three hours ago. You weren't at the post and the side door was locked from the inside. I tried to ask the kitchen staff, I tried to find Karoline, but they said Karoline told them no one was to speak to you today-"

He reached the edge of your bed, dropping heavily to his knees. Just yesterday, you would have consoled his anxieties, held him until his breathing calmed. Now his vulnerability just made you sick. 

"I thought they’d taken you. I thought... I thought I lost you before we could even reach the border. Speak to me, please. Look at me. Tell me you’re alright."

You didn’t move. You didn’t blink. You probably looked like a corpse to him.

"Please…" he whispered, his voice cracking. He slid closer on his knees. "Please. You’re scaring me. Did... did your brother do something? Did someone hurt you? Look at me, sweetheart. Just look at me."

He reached out, his hand hovering over yours for a fraction of a second before he dared to make contact. His fingers were freezing as he wrapped them around your wrist, his thumb instinctively finding your pulse point to verify that you were still among the living.

You looked at him.

The look on your face was so devoid of emotion that the plea on Marcus’s lips withered instantly. He froze, his fingers tightening slightly on your wrist, his mouth remaining slightly parted as he read the anger in your eyes. He had spent months studying your face, learning every detail of your terror, your grief, and your joy. But he had never seen this.

"Marcus," you said. “You’re late.”

Marcus blinked quickly, confused by what you meant. He swallowed hard. "Late? I... I was at the post for hours. I waited until the final bell. I thought-"

"No," you interrupted, your tone never rising. Men in Austria didn’t take women seriously if they yelled. "I don't mean today, Captain. I mean France. Sixteen hundred hours. The cell block in the western corridor."

Part of you was hoping he’d still look confused. Like he didn’t know what you were rambling on about. You hoped your father continued to be a liar.

But when his face turned grey you knew all of your fears were proven right.  His fingers slipped from your wrist and he stumbled backward while still on his knees, his boots catching on the fringe of your rug.

"What..." he began to sound defensive. His eyes darted toward the locked door, then to the corners of the room. "What are you... what are you talking about? France was years ago. The rescue..."

"The recovery," you corrected, finally pushing yourself up into a sitting position. "That's what you called it in the debriefing, isn't it? You told my father the 'asset' was already compromised. You told him a spoiled palace girl wasn't worth the lives of your valuable men."

"No," Marcus interjected immediately and thrashed his head from side to side. He reached out to grab the bedpost. "No, no, no... that’s not... who told you that? Who put those lies in your head? Your father? Your father is a monster, he's trying to tear us apart-"

"He knows we’re fucking, Marcus. He knows every single thing."

Marcus stopped breathing entirely. He looked as though he might throw up right onto the edge of your bed.

"But he didn't have to tell me about the hallway, Marcus," you continued, leaning forward, your face inches from his as he cowered against the wood of your bed frame. "I remembered the sound myself. A quiet…clicking. For years, I thought it was the pipes. I thought I was losing my mind while that French animal was tearing the clothes off my back on the stone. But it wasn't the pipes, was it? It was the safety on your rifle. You were standing right outside the door."

"My love, listen to me, please - "

"You checked your pocket watch," you growled, letting yourself get angry. "You stood there and you listened to me beg. You listened to me scream for ten minutes because the 'timing wasn't convenient' for your career. You let him hurt me so you could carry out a quiet corpse instead of a girl who could still make noise and ruin your operational breach. You are a monster."

"It was an order!" Marcus suddenly shrieked, losing his composure. He lunged forward, his hands slamming onto the mattress on either side of your knees, his face flushed a dark, furious crimson, his spit flying from his lips. "It was a direct order from the high command! The guard post at the end of the hall hadn't been cleared yet! If we breached early, the alarms would have sounded and they would have executed you before we even crossed the threshold! I had to wait! I had to save the unit!"

"You left me to be raped!" you screamed back. You threw yourself forward, your hands slamming into his chest, your nails digging through his coat. "You stood three feet away and you let him hurt me! You looked at your watch while I was being assaulted!"

"I survived!" he sobbed, his head dropping onto the mattress right beside your thigh, his massive shoulders heaving as he wept pathetically into your sheets. "I had thirty men under my command! If I moved too early, everyone died! You don't understand the battlefield, you don't know what it's like-"

"And then you came back here," you gripped his hair, forcing his face up to look at yours. "And you watched me go crazy for months. You told me you loved me. You let me bind you to a bed yesterday, Marcus! You let me think I was in control while you were just performing a penance for the night you decided I was trash."

Marcus stared up at you, his eyes bloodshot. The total exposure of his darkest shame seemed to drain the muscle right out of him. He looked at your hands in his hair, then back to your eyes, searching desperately for a flicker of the girl who used to melt into his touch.

"It wasn't a performance. I swear to you,  by everything holy, it wasn't a lie. When I came back... when I saw what they had done to you, what I had let happen... it tore my soul out. I took this assignment to protect you. Every time I held you... I was trying to piece you back together. I love you. I love you more than my own life."

"You don't love me," you sneered. "You pity me. And you are disgusted by your own cowardice."

He flinched as if you had struck him across the face. He reached out, his hand shaking violently as he tried to touch your knee through your dress. "We can still go. The carriage is ready for tomorrow. W-we can leave tonight. I’ll take you to the coast, sweetheart, I will spend the rest of my miserable life crawling on my knees to earn your forgiveness. Just don't look at me like this. Please. Don't let your father win."

You looked down at his hand on your knee before you moved your leg away from his touch, leaving him grasping at empty air.

"We’re Marcus.”

Marcus stared at his empty hand, the fingers still curled as if trying to grasp the ghost of your skin.

"No," he squeaked. "No, don't say that. Don't do this. You're letting him win. You're letting the King inside your head. He’s a master at this, he finds the one thing that keeps a person alive and he poisons it. He did it to your mother, he did it to your brother, and now he’s doing it to us!"

He lunged forward again, pinning you in place with his sheer bulk. He was so close you could smell the stale coffee on his breath, see the individual burst capillaries in his bloodshot eyes.

"I was given an impossible choice!" he yelled, his chest heaving against the edge of the bed. "Do you have any idea what the French would have done if we bungled that breach? They had artillery aimed at the cell blocks! One wrong step, one premature gunshot, and they would have blown the entire western corridor into brick dust! I didn't wait because you were a royal. I waited because I wanted to make sure I could actually bring you out alive!"

"You're a liar!" You brought your fists down against his shoulders but he didn't even flinch. He just took the blows. "You told my father I was trash! You sat in his office and you told him my value was halved! You didn't try to save my life, you tried to save your own flawless record!"

"I had to say those things!" Marcus roared back, his voice booming through the high-ceilinged room, entirely uncaring if the guards wandering outside the doors heard him. He grabbed your wrists mid-strike, forcing your hands down onto the sheets. "Look at who we are dealing with! If I had gone into that debriefing acting like a lovesick boy, if I had shown a single ounce of sentimentality for you, your father would have removed me from the unit instantly! He would have buried you in a different convent, under a different name, and I never would have been able to get close to you again! I played his game! I spoke his language so he would give me the guard detail!"

For a fraction of a second, the sheer force of his conviction threatened to shake you. The old Marcus was screaming at you, begging you to believe him.

But then you remembered the look on your father's face. He looked so sad for you. He held your hair back. Your father didn't love you enough to fabricate a lie that perfectly tailored to your secret memories.

"He didn't give you the detail because you played him, Marcus, he gave you the detail because he knew exactly what you did. He knew you were a coward who would keep me quiet out of your own sheer guilt."

You twisted your wrists, using every ounce of your strength to rip your hands out of his grip. 

"You watched me," you hissed. "Every time I woke up screaming, sweating through the sheets because I could still feel that man's hands on me... you held me. You kissed my forehead. You told me it was just a bad dream. But it wasn't a dream to you, was it? It was a memory. You were remembering the sound of the wooden door muffling my voice. You were remembering the clicks of your men's rifles. Did it make you feel powerful, Marcus? Knowing you were the god who decided exactly when my suffering was allowed to end?"

"I love you! I love you, I swear to God... I would take a bullet for you right now. I would let your father flay me in the courtyard if it meant you believed me. Don't go to Thomas. He will look at you and see nothing but a womb for his heirs. I look at you and I see my entire world."

The word world had barely left his lips before the rage inside you surged. Your arm snapped back and you threw the entire weight of your torso into the strike. The crack of your palm meeting his cheekbone shattered in the air - you hit him hard.

Marcus froze, his face turned away from you, the pale skin of his cheek instantly blooming into a red in the distinct shape of your fingers.

He didn't move. He didn't lift a hand to soothe the sting. He just stayed there, his head bowed, taking the strike with the submissiveness of a dog that knew it deserved the whip.

"Don't you dare use that word to me," your hand throbbed from the slap, but you bit back the pain. "Don't you dare sit on your knees by my bed and tell me I am your world. You don't get to look at the ruin you watched happen and call it love!"

The slap hadn't cleared the terror from his eyes; it had only deepened the desperation on his face. A thin line of saliva, laced with a speck of copper from where his teeth had cut the inside of his lip, pooled at the corner of his mouth.

"Hit me again. Hit me until your hands bleed, tear my face apart for all I care. Do whatever you have to do to clear the anger, but look at me. Don't walk away from what we built."

"We built nothing!" you shrieked. You wanted to hit him again. You wanted to use your knuckles this time, to strike him until his eyes were swollen shut the exact same way yours had been in that prison. "We built a temple out of a lie! Every time you touched my thigh to calm me down from a nightmare, were you checking the damage? Were you wondering if the princess was finally quiet enough? Tell me the truth, you…you coward!"

"I was trying to save you! Yes! I carry the guilt of that night every single second! I hear the hallway in my sleep! But when I held you, it wasn't a game! I wanted to burn that prison down for you! I wanted to give you a life where nobody could ever hurt you again!"

"Except you hurt me worse than the French guard ever could, Marcus. He only took my body. You took the only piece of my happiness I had left."

The submissive man vanished in a single heartbeat, replaced by a defensive sneer. He wiped the track of saliva and blood from his lip with the back of his hand, his eyes narrowing into slits as he stood up from his knees.

"You are a fool," he spat. "You sit there on your high horse, striking me, judging me, and you don’t even see the strings tied to your own wrists. How can you be this blind? How are you believing a single word that comes out of your father's mouth?"

He took a step back.

"Damian is a monster!  He has spent your entire life manipulating you, using you, tearing your mind to pieces just to see how the gears turn! He sent you to France as a child to be a sacrificial lamb, and now, the moment he sees you finding a sliver of happiness, the moment he realizes he’s losing his grip on his favorite little puppet, he tells you a ghost story, and you drop to your knees and worship him for it?"

He laughed in your face and you scowled at him like he was a predator.

"All it took to break you was daddy being a little sympathetic? Twenty-four years of cold-blooded hatred, but he gives you one soft look and you completely forget who he is? He played you! He knew exactly what button to push to make you destroy the only real thing you’ve ever had! You talk about betrayal, princess, but look at you. You’re running straight into Thomas’s bed because it’s easier to be a coward in a crown than to fight for a life with a common soldier. You never wanted to be free. You just wanted someone to pity you until your father gave you a better offer."

The man who had held you while you shook from memories of being defiled, the man who claimed to worship every broken piece of you, was now throwing your assault and your future marriage in your face like dirt. He was reducing your agony, your impossible choice, and your stolen agency to the pathetic whim of a girl who just needed a man's bed to crawl into. He was weaponizing the very vulnerability you had trusted him with to paint you as transactional. 

You recoiled, physically pulling your body back until your spine hit the headboard. The revulsion was so intense it made you dizzy.

"Do you..." Your voice came out as a horrified whisper.. "Do you really mean that?"

You looked at him, searching the contours of his face for the man you thought you knew. For a fraction of a second, Marcus flinched. The defensivness faltered, and his eyes widened slightly as the sheer cruelty of what he’d just said finally registered. He knew he had gone too far. He knew he had just crossed a line from which there was no return.

But the silence in the room lasted too long.

Instead of dropping to his knees, instead of begging you to forget the words he’d just spat, Marcus’s jaw grinded. You watched the muscles in his neck tighten as he deliberately forced the hesitation down, burying it beneath a layer of pride. His posture went rigid again, his eyes hardening into twin chips of flint as he locked his gaze onto yours, refusing to look away from the damage he was causing.

"Yes. Yes, I mean it. If you walk out that door and let your father hand you over to a stranger like a piece of prize cattle, then you are exactly what he thinks you are. You’re just a palace girl who prefers the safety of a master."

You didn't blink. You didn't cry out. You just stared at him.

The man you thought loved you was a fiction. He was just another architect of your degradation, willing to tear down your dignity the moment you refused to bow to his version of the truth…It was all a lie.

You let out a breath, and with it, the last remaining warmth of what you and him had left your body.

"I look at you and I don't even know what I'm looking at anymore."

"You're right about one thing," you continued, looking up at him with eyes that were entirely dead. "I am going to marry Thomas."

Marcus inhaled, but before he could speak, you cut him off.

"And you should go back to the city. You should forget everything we had and you should marry Augusta."

He looked startled at the mention of Augusta, the girl you were once jealous got more of his attention than you.

"Don't - "

"Why not?" you hissed. "She was the one I was so jealous of, wasn't she?  I used to lie awake in this very bed, sick to my stomach, wondering if you looked at her the way you looked at me. And you swore to me. You held my face in your hands and you told me she meant nothing. You said you could never love her the way you loved me. But you don't know how to love, Marcus. You only know how to hide. And a simple servant girl is exactly what a coward like you deserves. She won't ask you about things that make you uuncomfortable. . She will look at your medals and think you're a hero, and you can live the rest of your miserable life letting her believe it."

You leaned back against the headboard, entirely dismissing him.

"Get out of my chambers, Acacius. And pray to whatever God you have left that I never look your way again."

Ongoing...

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Monday, September. 2003

Joel hadn’t dreamed in years.

He used to enjoy sleeping because it meant peace and quiet and the ability to escape to a different plane of reality. It was the only sense of escapism and whimsy he had.

He wasn’t sure when that changed, or when he stopped dreaming at all. One night, he just shut his eyes and…woke up. He had to do a double take when he checked his alarm clock when he realized that it hadn’t been 10 minutes at all. He slept through the whole night without coming up with a single interesting dream.

It happened again the following night.

Then the next.And the next.

Did you know that dreams, or, the lack of, can chage your entire life? Not like when you have one really scary dream that you remember for several years afterward. Dreaming is an indicator of REM sleep, or, heavy, deep sleep. If you don’t reach REM, and if you don’t reach REM, you don’t get a good night's rest. It makes you angry, irritable, a little stupid, and you start to lose your memory.

At least, that’s what Joels doctor said when he brought up his chronic headaches a few months ago. But don’t worry, he had said, an Ambien will do the trick.

An Ambien did not do the trick

Joel woke up this morning at 6 a.m. sharp, as he did every other day, with a pressure behind his eyes that made it difficult to open them. His arms ached from the lumbar load he had to carry himself yesterday, and his stomach was growling from lack of food. Last night he got home late and quickly made something for Sarah so that she could eat. He didn’t have the energy to make himself an adult portion of anything.

He groaned and rolled over onto his back. He had to get to work at 6:45 to start on paperwork for the new apartment he was working on, but Sarah’s school didn’t start until 8:30 a.m. In the summer when Joel had to work but Sarah didn’t have school, he would pay Tommy’s girlfriend Maria to babysit her. She was a sweet girl, and insisted that she babysit Sarah at a discount, not because they were all basically family, but because she just loved hanging out with her. She’s been dating Tommy for 2 years now, but she had to go back to Colorado to finish her Masters degree. She was such a smart kid…how Tommy got her, he had no idea.

When Sarah was in Kindergarten, the elementary school had a program where parents could pay for their child to stay as late as 6 p.m. so that they could finish work without worry about child care. Joel managed to scrape some money together to put Sarah in that program, but that was also when her mother was paying child support. Joel had gone from stressed, but safe in terms of his ability to financial take care of Sarah to absolutely fucked with one letter in the mail on a random Thursday in April.

Isla being out of the picture officially should have made his life easier. Now he didn’t have to communicate with his ex-wife at all – no more fighting about visitation rights, or threats to go to court over child care payments, or having to deal with her constantly reminding him of how shitty of a father he was and how he was an even shittier husband while they were married. A weight had been taken off his shoulders. It should have been a fresh start. It would have been a fresh start if it was just Joel.

But it wasn’t just him anymore. Sarah was in his life now and he would be damned if she wasn’t. That baby girl saved his life and she consumed every waking thought he had, which meant he was more focused on his daughter growing up without a mother. From the moment Isla left and divorced Joel when Sarah was 3, Joel knew that Sarah wouldn’t have the traditional home life he grew up having. She would spend her weekends driving from his apartment to Islas wondering why her Mama and Daddy couldn’t live together like her friends' parents. And no matter what Isla did to Joel, that didn’t matter to him anymore. What mattered was giving his daughter as stable of a family life as he could.

That was, like he said, fucked now. Now he had to explain to his daughter that Mama willingly surrendered her rights to her own daughter because she didn’t want her. That she wouldn’t be seeing Mama anymore and wouldn’t be saying goodbye either. That she could no longer do the afterschool program or ballet or soccer because Joel couldn’t afford all of it on his own salary.

It had been a few days since Joel got the letter in the mail. Every night, Sarah and him would pop in front of the T.V. and watch Hey Arnold reruns. Kindergarteners didn’t get homework (her teacher had told him that traditional homework assignments start in 2nd grade), so Joel liked to spend the time he did have with her. Before he would know it, he would continue working late and she would be busy with homework and going out with her friends. Their T.V. time was special to him.

She was laying on his lap the night he told her, his hand scratching her scalp, something she always begged him and Isla to do. He didn’t know where it came from, but he had his suspicions that Isla would do that while she was doing her hair and tugged too tight.

“You awake down there baby girl?”

She would always say she was wide awake.

“Of course I am daddy. You always ask me this.”

And every time she answered, she was never wide awake. When she was near sleep, her voice got a little raspy, just the way Joel’s did when he was real’ tired. Joel couldn’t hide his smile at how cute she was when she was sleepy.

“That’s because it’s 8:30 p.m. on a Friday and your bedtime is usually 7. It’s late for you.”

Sarah nuzzled into his leg more.

“I’m a big girl you know. I stay up late at Mama’s all the time and I am never, ever sleepy.”

Joel’s hand froze in her hair at the mention of her mother. He really didn’t want to do this…He didn’t want to be the first man to break his daughter's heart. He could just not tell her. Let her realize on her own. But certainly that would cause more emotional crisis if her daddy didn’t let her talk about it?

“Keep scratching my hair daddy!” Sarah rolled onto her back and was looking up at Joel with a scowl. He looked at her for a minute before hoisting her up and sitting her on his lap. Her face contorted from a scowl to confusion.

Joel swallowed hard and looked at his daughter. She looked just like her mother in all of the obvious ways – her skin tone, her curly hair, her hazel and green eyes. But she was all Joel in her mannerisms, like how her eyes squinted when she smiled or her slight pout when she was confused about something. His favorite was how she would put her hands on her hips while she was really trying to get her point across.

“Sarah…” he inhaled. “You know how you go to your Mamas every Saturday and Sunday?”

“And Christmas and Easter and my birthday.”

Right. Part of the custody agreement was that Isla would get less days per week, but all of the holidays.

“Right…right, yeah. But I, um. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

Her lips scrunched up.

“About Mama?”

“Yeah baby. What do you…what do you think about not doing that anymore?”

God he was fucking this up so bad.

“Not going to Mama’s anymore? Why not?”

Why not? He wanted to spill his brain, reveal all the times she put her hands on him or she would steal his money or she would cheat – no. Until Sarah started asking querstions on her own, he would not tell her everything Isla put him through.

“Your mama... she’s got some things she needs to work on, things that are just for grown-ups. Because of that, she’s not gonna be coming around for a long time. It’s gonna be just you and me from now on.”

Without a beat:

“Is she sick?”

Joel shook his head fast.

“No, no. She’s not sick.” Joel rubbed a hand over his face, searching for the words. "It means she’s decided she can't stay in the house or... or do the weekend visits anymore. She’s gonna be living somewhere else for a long, long time. It’s gonna be just you and me."

Sarah paused, visibly taking this all in.

“She told me she was going to take me to the zoo this weekend. Did I make her sad? Sometimes I argue with her because I don’t want to eat my broccoli but–”

"No, Sarah. No, no," Joel interrupted, his heart sinking at the desperation in her voice. He gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. "Look at me. Look at me right now. You are the best kid in the world. You hear me? This isn't about you being loud, or messy, or anything you've ever done. This is a choice your mom made because she’s struggling, and it has nothing to do with you. It is not your fault. Not even a little bit."

A single tear tracked through the dust on Sarah's cheek. "So... we aren't going to see the lions?"

Seeing that single tear trail down her face was like watching his entire world fracture. He pulled her into an embrace, tucking her small head under his chin and rocking her gently.

"No, baby girl," he murmured. "We aren't goin' to see the lions with her. But listen to me, Sarah. Look at Daddy."

He pulled back just enough to frame her face with his calloused hands, wiping the tear away with his thumb. Her bottom lip was trembling, and she looked so small in the dim light of the living room, surrounded by the flickering glow of the television.

"You listen close. There is nothin', not one single thing, wrong with you. You aren't bad. You aren't 'too much.' You are the smartest, kindest, most perfect thing that ever happened to this world. You’re my baby girl, Sarah. You’re my whole life. Do you understand me?"

Sarah sniffled, her eyes glassy as she searched his face for the truth. "But if I was perfect... why did she leave?"

"Because sometimes people are broken in ways they can’t fix, Sarah. And it’s a damn shame, because she’s the one missin' out. She’s missin' out on the best kid in Texas." He kissed her forehead, lingering there for a second to breathe in the scent of her strawberry shampoo. It was the only thing in his life that felt right anymore. "I’m never leavin' you. It’s you and me/ Always."

She leaned forward, thumping her head against his chest and wrapping her arms around his neck as far as they would go.

"Just us?" she whispered into his flannel shirt.

"Just us," Joel promised, squeezing her tight. He looked at the empty space on the couch where the bills and that soul-crushing letter usually sat, then back down at the top of her head. He’d work double shifts. He’d skip every meal if he had to. He’d sell the truck and walk to the job site before he let her feel like she wasn't enough for a single second longer.

"And hey," he said, nudging her until she looked up. "I don't care what she promised. Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’m callin' Uncle Tommy, tellin' him we're takin' the day off."

Sarah’s eyes widened. "You are?"

"Yeah," Joel said, a genuine, tired smile finally breaking through. "I think we’ve got a very important date. Pack your sun hat and those little binoculars you like. Tomorrow, I’m takin' you to the zoo. We’re gonna see the lions, the tigers, and every single monkey in that place. Just me and you. How’s that sound?"

She tucked her face back into his neck, her hands gripping his shirt tight.

"Okay, Daddy," she whispered. "The lions."

Ever since then, it was him and Sarah against the world. One of the several stresses that kept him up at night was that he was unintentionally ruining her life, trying to be a single dad. That she had severe emotional damage and it would all surface later when he inevitably got the call that she was arrested for shoplifting and using kleptomania as a way to heal her broken family life.

The carpet was still cold on his feet as he shuffled into Sarah’s bedroom. He flickered the light on and she was still sleeping on her stomach, spread out like a starfish. That girl could sleep through nuclear war. She clearly didn’t get that from him.

He sat on the end of her bed and gave her scalp that little scratch she loved before rubbing her arm gently.

“Time for the first day of 1st grade Sarah girl,” Sarah grumbled and rolled over onto her back. “Time to go see all of your friends from Kindegarten.”

Her eyes were still closed when she spoke.

“Daddy I don’t even know if I have any friends in my class.”

“Well that’s not true. You have plenty of friends! You have Emily, and Jaida–”

“--yes, but I don’t know if they’re in my class. Emily said at our playdate the other day that she’s in Mrs. Crenshaw’s class, and Jaida said at ballet that she’s in Ms. LaPorta’s class. I don’t have a teacher! How am I supposed to go to school without a teacher!”

This was, technically Joels fault. He threw away all of his mail that wasn’t related to finances or company paperwork. He told himself weeks ago to keep an eye out for some letters from the school informing him who Sarah’s teacher would be and the address book of the parents of the kids in her class. He must have thrown in out.

He pushed her curls out of her face.

“You have a teacher baby.”

Her eyes opened slowly, like she was suspicious of his motives.

“Who?”

“Well, I’m not sure–”

“Daddy! You threw it out!”

“--BUT, you do have a teacher. When Uncle Tommy drops you off, you can ask the front office. I promise. I’m sure this happens all the time.”

She sat upright, now fully awake.

“But what if I don’t know anyone in my class? Emily said her mom got a paper with everyones names so I would know. Did you throw that out?”

“Uh…”

She frowned and stood up from bed, clearly done with this conversation. She marched toward her dresser with a heavy-handed sigh that sounded far too much like her mother’s, and Joel felt that familiar pang of guilt hit him right in the center of his chest. She was his weak spot.

“Hey, hold on," he called after her. "How about this? I'm gonna go make those Mickey Mouse pancakes. Extra chocolate chips. And while you eat, I'll call the school and get the name of your teacher. Deal?"

Sarah paused, clutching her denim overalls she had placed out the night before. "With the whipped cream?"

"If we have it, yeah. Whipped cream too."

Joel retreated to his room first, putting on his ‘Miller Construction’ shirt and jeans, and brushing his teeth. He couldn’t remember the last time he made his bed, but that seemed like the most miniscule of the issues in the world.

In the kitchen, he managed to find a half-empty bag of chocolate chips in the back of the pantry and carefully placed them to give Mickey eyes and a lopsided smile. By the time Sarah walked into the kitchen, dressed in her sparkly first-day shirt, a stack was waiting for her.

"I called," Joel lied, leaning against the counter with his mug of black coffee. "The school said their computers are actin' up. They told me it's a surprise, but they've got a big poster in the cafeteria with your name on it. It’s like a VIP list."

Sarah didn't look entirely convinced, but the lure of chocolate chips was stronger than her suspicion. She sat down and began to eat, her small feet swinging under the chair.

"Since I gotta get to the office early to meet the lumber crew," Joel said, "you’re gonna come with me for a little bit. Uncle Tommy is gonna meet us there, and then he's gonna take you the rest of the way to school. He’ll walk you right in and help you find that VIP list. Sound like a plan?"

"Can I sit in your big chair at the office?" she asked through a mouthful of pancake.

"Just for a little while. And don't you go drawin' on any of my blueprints."

While Sarah ate, Joel put her hair in two high puffs and tied them off with ribbon. On his first day with Sarah alone, he had taken one look at her hair and knew he needed to teach himself how to do it for her. All he knew was to run a brush through it and call it a day. But he tried that with Sarah and it got stuck in her hair for an hour, leaving her sobbing. He never wanted that to happened again. So, he took himself to the salon Sarah would go to only when she needed hair cuts and asked her hair dresser Deja for help. It was a bit under the table since her boss didn’t want her showing people how to do their own hair to keep the customers coming in, but Joel appreciated the help. Right now, he knew how to do high puffs, two strand twists, and a (painfree!) slick back.

Twenty minutes later, they were in the truck, the morning sun already beginning to bake the Texas asphalt. Joel’s office was a cramped, double-wide trailer parked at the edge of a dusty construction lot that he occasionally shared with Tommy.

He hoisted her up and plopped her into his creaky leather desk chair. She disappeared into the padding, her small legs dangling over the edge. Joel pushed a stack of scrap paper and a yellow highlighter toward her.

"There. You’re the boss for the next thirty minutes. I gotta get these invoices filed."

He sat at the smaller side desk, trying to focus on the numbers, but his eyes kept drifting to her. She was humming to herself, carefully highlighting the edges of her paper, looking so small and out of place in a room meant for big guys and heavy machinery.

The door to the trailer creaked open, letting in a gust of humid air and the sound of a distant bulldozer. Tommy stepped in, his hard hat tucked under his arm and a grin already forming on his face when he saw the "boss" sitting in Joel's chair. Tommy had really helped out when Isla left, even though Joel always thought he should be out living life like every other kid in their early 20s. But his brother insisted that he was content right where he was.

"Well look at you," Tommy chuckled, walking over and giving Sarah a kiss on the cheek. "You look like you're ready to fire somebody."

"I'm workin', Uncle Tommy," she said with a serious nod. "I'm a VIP."

Tommy looked over at Joel, his eyebrows raised. "A VIP, huh?"

"The school's havin' a little trouble with the paperwork," Joel said, continuing his lie that he even called the school. "I need you to take her over there at 8:15. You gotta go to the cafeteria and find her name on the glass. She's worried about who her teacher is."

Tommy caught the look in Joel's eyes – he always knew what his older brother needed.

“I got her, Joel. Don't worry," He turned back to Sarah, giving her a wink. "You ready, kiddo? We're gonna find you the best teacher in that whole building. I bet they're gonna be so impressed they'll let you have two recesses."

Sarah finally smiled, jumping down from the big chair and grabbing her backpack. Joel stood up, walking over to kiss the top of her head.

“Be good for your uncle. And I'll see you at three, okay? It’s back to school night so I’ll be there to meet your teacher too.”

"Bye, Daddy," she said, grabbing Tommy’s hand.

Joel stood in the doorway of the trailer, watching the two of them walk toward Tommy’s truck. He watched until the taillights disappeared around the bend of the gravel road, wondering why he kept disappointing her no matter how hard he tried.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

November, 1990. Joel.

Joel actually was reading the books you gave him, no matter how much his friends thought he was lying about being interested in reading to get in your pants.

In reality, the logic was reversed. The interest in the books was a byproduct of the interest in the girl, but the result was the same: Joel Miller was currently sitting on the floor of his best friend Bill’s garage, back pressed against a stack of spare tires, squinting at the pages of The Great Gatsby by the light of a single hanging shop bulb.

Bill kicked the toe of Joel’s boot as he walked past with a tray of rattling tools. "You still on that? I thought you finished the one about the lawyer weeks ago."

Joel didn't look up, his thumb holding his place in the chapter. "Different book. Keep up."

"Whatever you say, Professor," Bill grunted, though he didn't go back to his engine. He leaned against the workbench, cracking open one of his dads beers and watching Joel with a look of half-amused, half-concerned curiosity.

"Seriously, though. Where’d this sudden interest come from anyway? I mean, you two were in the same English class all last year. I saw her walk past us in the hall a dozen times. You never said a damn word about her. Never said you had a crush, never even mentioned her name."

Bill gestured vaguely with his beer can toward the book in Joel's grease-stained hands.

“So why now? You run into her in the library one night and suddenly you're trading your guitar strings for bookmarks? It don't track, Miller. What changed?"

Joel finally closed the book and was quiet for a long moment.

"I don't know," Joel admitted. "In class... she was just the girl in the front who knew all the answers. I thought she was stuck up maybe, like a know-it-all. She didn't exactly look at me like I was worth the time of day, and I wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of trying to bridge that gap."

He looked up at Bill.

"But when I saw her at the library that first night... it was different. She was just sitting there by the shelves, completely lost in picking between books. She didn't even hear me come up. I went over there thinking I'd just ask for a recommendation, maybe get a quick answer and leave. But when she started talking... it wasn't a lecture. She was just so... certain. Like the stories in her hands were the most important thing in the building."

Joel stood up, brushing the dust off his jeans and tucking the paperback into his jacket pocket.

"I missed it last year," Joel said, heading for the garage door. "I was too busy trying to be the guy everyone expected me to be. But when I asked her for that recommendation, she didn't roll her eyes. She actually looked at me, Bill. Not like I was the guy who made jokes in the back of the room, but like I was someone who could actually appreciate what she loved. I think I just want to prove her right."

Joel opened the door, but Bill stopped him.

“You should invite her to Frank’s party on Friday.”

Joel paused and turned back. It wasn’t that Bill hated women, which Joel suspected for a bit. It was actually that Bill hated everyone. He was a big lone wolf type of guy. He stuck with Frank and Joel and that was it. He never dated, never expressed interest in dating, and he’d always tease the other boys for crushing on girls. If he wanted to invite you…

“Why?”

Bill sipped his beer and shrugged.

“‘Cause,” Bill chuckled as he wiped a smear of grease across his forehead. “I’m tired of hearin’ you talk about the ‘profound sadness of the American dream’ or whatever the hell you were mumblin’ about five minutes ago. If she’s as smart as you say, maybe she can explain it to me so I don’t have to listen to you fail at it.”

Bill set the beer can down on the workbench.

“Besides. If she’s really the one who made Joel Miller pick up a book without a gun to his head, she’s probably the only person at that party worth talkin' to. Frank’s just gonna have the same five idiots doin’ keg stands and talkin’ about the football game. It’d be nice to have someone there with a brain.”

Joel leaned against the doorframe, cold air slipping through the garage door. He thought about you in that library - the way you looked so at home among the stacks, the way you handled those keys like they were the greatest gift ever.. The idea of bringing you to a house party thrown by Frank, where everyone would be smoking cigarettes and blasting loud rock music, felt almost like a sacrilege.

“She isn’t really the ‘party’ type, Bill,” Joel said, though he was already picturing it. He was picturing you standing in a crowded kitchen, maybe having a panic attack. “She spends her Friday nights lockin’ up the library, remember?”

“Then change her mind,” Bill countered, heading back to the Lincoln. “Ask her. Worst she can do is say no and go back to her books. But if you don’t ask... then you’re just the guy who sits on my floor readin’ Gatsby in the dark. And that’s a real sad story, Miller.”

Joel didn't have a comeback for that. He just nodded, a small, tight smile playing on his lips as he stepped out into the night.

The drive to the library was quiet.He wasn't sure if you’d say yes. He wasn't even sure if he wanted you to see him in that environment (which he was trying to outgrow). But as he pulled into the library parking lot and saw your car sitting under that same flickering streetlight, he realized Bill was right. He didn't want to just be a character in your library life. He wanted to see if you’d be a part of his world, too.

He killed the engine and sat there for a second, watching the light from the library windows spill out onto the pavement. He reached into his pocket, his fingers tracing the edge of the book, and took a deep breath. The heavy glass door groaned as Joel pushed it open, the bell above it letting out a tiny chime.

He didn't have to look far.

There you were, tucked away at the listening station. You had the oversized headphones on, the thick cord snaking across the table, and you were so deep into your book that you didn't even notice the cool draft he’d brought in with him.

Joel stopped ten feet away. He wiped his palms on his jeans, suddenly acutely aware of the grease under his fingernails and the way his denim jacket felt a size too small. He’d stared down site foremen twice his size and hadn't felt this shaky.

He walked toward you, his boots heavy on the carpet. When he reached the edge of the light, he didn't just sit down. He hovered, his hand reaching out to pull the chair but stopping halfway.

"Hey," he said, but his voice cracked, coming out like a dry rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. "Hey."

You looked up, a slow smile spreading across your face as you slid the headphones down around your neck.

"You're late, Miller," you teased, tapping your watch. "I was about to lock the doors on you. Thought you gave up on this book obsession."

"No, I, uh, I didn't give up," Joel said, finally pulling the chair out and sitting down. He looked at the CD player, then at his own hands, then finally at you. He looked like he’d forgotten how to breathe. "Bill had a... thing. At the garage. A manifold. It was, uh, complicated."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out the copy of The Great Gatsby. He set it on the table between you, but he pushed it toward you a little too hard, and it slid halfway across the laminate. He quickly caught it with his thumb, his face flushing a deep red.

"Finished it," he managed to say.

"In three days?" You leaned in, your chin resting on your hand. "Joel, I thought you were working double shifts. When did you have time to read?"

"Between... stuff. Late at night," he said, his eyes darting to your book and then back to your face. He was usually so steady, so sure of himself, but sitting here with you, he felt like he was back in freshman year, tripping over his own feet. "I wanted to know... what happened. With the girl. Daisy."

"And?" you asked, watching the way he was fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve. "What's the verdict?"

"I think he was a fool. Spent so much time lookin' backward... he missed what was right in front of him. He thought he had to be someone else to be enough for her. I think... I think that's a damn shame."

He went quiet then. This was the part Bill had told him to do. The part that felt impossible.

"Listen," he started, his voice barely a whisper. He looked at the Prince CD, watching it spin behind the little plastic window. "My friend Frank... he’s havin' this thing. On Friday. A party."

He looked up at you, and the sheer nervousness in his eyes was enough to stop your heart. He looked absolutely terrified.

"I was hopin'... I mean, if you aren't too busy with school... if you’d want to go. With me." He stopped, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. "And I know I’m probably not the first guy you’d pick to, uh, stand in a kitchen with, but I’d really... I’d really like it if you were there."

The Prince CD reached a crescendo in the silence, the muffled guitar solo humming against the table.

"A party?" you repeated softly.

"Yeah. Bill’s gonna be there. You remember Bill from school right? He actually asked about you. Wants to know if you're as smart as I keep tellin' him you are." He stopped, realizing what he’d just admitted, and his face went even redder. "I mean... I talk about you. To him. A bit."

He looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He was the only guy in town who could make a construction site look easy, yet here he was, completely undone by a girl with a library card.

"Joel," you said, reaching out and resting your hand on the table near his.

He didn't move, but you could see the tension leave his shoulders as he looked at your hand, then back at your eyes.

“I'd love to go. With you."

Joel blinked, relief washing over him. A genuine, shaky smile finally broke through the nerves.

"Yeah? You... you sure?"

"I'm sure," you promised.

"Okay," Joel breathed out, leaning back in his chair like he’d just finished a twelve-hour shift. "Okay. Good. That's... that's really good."

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Monday, September 2003.

His jaw popped so loud while he was eating his lunch he had to peer out of his trailer windows to see if his crew heard over the sound of the construction equipment.

Once he realized that no one heard the inhuman sound, he let out a silent, “Fuck!” and clutched his jaw, which was still cradling a bite of his turkey sandwich.

Joel had a robot jaw, as Sarah would say. Though she wasn’t far off. It was rebuilt with 3 mini plates and 6 screws holding them down, with a larger plate on top, and 8 screws holding that plate down. Sometimes when he opened his mouth, Sarah would pretend to pour oil in his mouth like the tinman from the Wizard of Oz.

That was his big injury from the accident. He had broken his arm, had a bleeding liver, a concussion, whiplash, and some very, very ugly scars. But the worst one? He completely shattered his jaw upon impact with the dashboard.

He wished his brain chose to forget the accident so he wouldn’t have to remember the god awful sensation he felt through his body upon impact. Wasn’t your brain supposed to do that after traumatic events? Just forget everything? Was shattering his jaw not traumatic enough for his brain?

He remembered hearing the pain before actually feeling it, like the delay of a firework. It sounded like the initial crack of a falling tree trunk then silence. You never learn to appreciate silence until you have 1 second before your jaw sounds like grinding glass as shards of your teeth and jaw bone grind against each other.

Then there’s the disconnect. You spend your life knowing that your jaw opens and closes. That when you close your mouth, your teeth will meet. But what if one day, it doesn’t? Joel’s mouth went from a part of him to a swinging slab of skin that didn’t know where it was supposed to go. When he tried to move it, there was no resistance - sliding sensation as the left side of his chin drifted toward his neck. It wasn't even pain yet; it was just the realization that the "floor" of his head had dropped out. When the car stopped spinning, he tried to swallow, but his throat didn't know how to work when the bone it was attached to was floating in three different directions.

Then came the heat. It was a thick, pulsing surge that tasted like a mouthful of hot pennies. Every time he breathed, he could feel the edges of his own teeth clicking against the exposed nerves of his splintered bone. His brain hadn't blacked out to save him; it had sat there and forced him to record every grinding millimeter of his face falling apart.

Now, 7 years later, he still feels long term effects. Titanium absorbs temperature faster than skin, which meant when Joel went from working on site to going in his trailer with AC, he quickly developed what could only be described as a brain freeze that lasted for an hour. It happened when he drank something cold as well, which is a problem in Texas heat - he always had to be drinking something cold to not overheat on site.

Texas was a humid state, which meant his face naturally swelled a bit, just like everyone elses. But not everyone elses jaw was made of titanium, which didn’t swell. While the rest of the crew just complained about their boots feeling tight or their shirts sticking to their backs, Joel felt like his face was being put through a slow-motion hydraulic press. He could feel the exact outline of the six screws holding the mini-plates, each one a localized point of pressure that felt like a hot needle being driven into his marrow.

Part of his lip was entirely numb as well. Not a huge part, but enough that he tended to be a bit of a messy eater if he wasn’t careful. It seemed like one of the sillier side effects, but it was the one that made him the most insecure, especially when he took Sarah out to eat and she had to point out that food had slipped through his numb lip and gotten on his face. Having his little girl remind him that he’s not all there anymore never got less humiliating.

And then there was the TMJ - when he opened his mouth just a fraction too wide, the joint would catch on a ridge of bone or a stray screw head, hitching before it finally gave way. The sound was loud, and painful enough that he had to put his hands on his head to try not to black out. Sometimes, after a particularly bad pop, his jaw wouldn't quite sit right back in its socket, leaving him to massage the muscle until the "new" normal clicked back into place.

That’s what just happened now.

He was so busy massaging the side of his jaw that he didn’t notice Tommy coming in. He had gone straight from dropping Sarah off to working outside with the guys.

“Tried to take too big of a bite again?”

Joel swatted his hand at him without saying anything like he was trying to get a fly. His family was incredibly understanding and helpful after his accident becuase they knw him the best. They knew that he didn’t like people fussing over him or serious conversations so they tried to keep it as light as they could while continuing to be a reasonably worried family member.

“Fuck…” Joel grumbled and massaged his jaw. “Thought I learned how to stop those. How’d Sarah do at drop off? She find her teacher?”

Tommy sat himself on the cheap couch Joel had got for the office, so cheap that it likely had bed bugs.

“She’s not in class with those two friends of hers… what are their names?”

“Emily and Jaida.”

“Right. Yeah she’s not in class with either of them which completely set her off. She refused to go to the room or even let me walk her to the room.”

Joel nearly choked on his ibuprofen he was trying to swallow.

“Was she cryin’?”

Tommy hesitated for just a bit and took long breath. Joel knew the answer.

“She was shaking.”

He stopped chewing, the half-eaten sandwich suddenly feeling like concrete in his hand. He looked at Tommy, trying to reconcile the image of his shaking daughter.

“Shakin'?" Joel repeated. "Like... she couldn't catch her breath?"

Tommy nodded, his face pale as he recalled the scene.

"It wasn’t just first-day jitters, Joel. It was like her body was short-circuitin'. She was gaspin' so hard she couldn't even get the words out, just lookin' at the library door like a nightmare monster was gonna walk through it. She crawled under that little round table in the back and tucked herself into a ball so tight I thought she’d snap. She was clawin' at the carpet, just diggin' her nails into the rug."

Joel felt a cold sweat prickle at the back of his neck. He knew that sensory overload, the way the world becomes too loud until your brain just tries to bolt the doors. And now is baby felt it too?

She’s only 6.

"She kept pullin' at the collar of her shirt like she was chokin'. She kept whisperin', 'I can't find it, I can't find it.' I asked her what she couldn't find, and she just sobbed that she didn't have a name on the glass. She thought because she wasn't on that list, she didn't exist. That she didn't have a place to go."

Joel was a tough guy. He got told a lot that he didn’t smile enough. He had gotten into quite a few bar fights over the years. But that wasn’t tough, no. No, if they wanted to see tough, they should see what he would do to protect his daughter.

"Anyway," Tommy continued, leaning back against the mini-fridge and cracking a soda. "While I was trying to get her to come out, I went back to that clipboard lady who was standing trying to help everyone.. I was a mess, Joel. I was ready to start shouting just to get a name- just some kind of guarantee that Sarah wasn't just being shoved into a broom closet. I asked her point-blank: who is this teacher? Is she gonna know how to handle a kid who’s literally clawing at the floorboards?"

Joel took a cautious sip of water, but the water quickly radiated into the plates in his jaw, causing him to wince.

"And? She tell you?"

"She kept dancing around her name," Tommy let out a dry laugh. "But she spent ten minutes talking her up like she was some kind of saint. Said the teacher is a transplant, grew up right here in Texas but spent her whole career up in Massachusetts, teaching at some elite private school for the gifted and the 'complicated' kids."

Joel didn’t like the implication that his daughter was complicated, even though he knew that’s not what Tommy was insinuating. She was a good girl, always behavin’ and listening to her elders, just like he taught her. Her kindergarten teacher didn’t flag any learning challenges; said she was at the benchmark for everything. Sure, she was rather shy, but she had friends! And Joel did worry that she cried too frequently over little worries, but at her yearly check up, her doctor said kids are just learnin’ to regulate their emotions. She gave him some tips to help her when she was crying, and he was trying real hard to do them. He was trying real hard to do everything he could for her.

The implication that she was difficult insinuated to Joel that he really did fail as a father.

"The lady at the desk was practically beaming," Tommy added. "She said this teacher is a real powerhouse. Apparently, she won every national award they’ve got up North, like, the kind of teacher people move zip codes just to get their kids into her room. She said Sarah’s lucky because this teachers got a way of making the smart, anxious ones feel like they’re the only person in the room."

Joel stared at the wood grain of his desk, the ibuprofen finally starting to dull the ache in his face. It sounded like a different world - a world of private school uniforms and academic accolades that didn't have much to do with a dusty construction site in Austin. He felt a bit of hope, though. If this woman was half as good as the desk lady claimed, maybe Sarah had a chance at a normal year.

"Massachusetts," Joel muttered. "Fancy school, huh? Wonder why someone like that would move back here."

"Who knows?" Tommy said, standing up and grabbing his hard hat. "Maybe she missed the humidity. But hey, if she's as 'scary smart' as they say, maybe she can fix the mess that registration office made. Lord knows we need someone with a brain runnin' things."

"Just hope she's as good as they're sayin'," Joel said, his mind already drifting back to the blueprints. "Sarah needs more than just a smart teacher. She needs someone who can make her…."

He couldn’t find the words. Feel seen? Feel loved? Less reserved?

"I'll head back out to the crew," Tommy said, pausing at the trailer door. "And Joel? Sarah’s gonna be okay. She just needs to know her daddy isn't lookin' for a 'big girl,' just his girl."

"I know.’

He looked at the empty seat in his office where Sarah had sat just hours before, spinning in his chair and drawing lions. He didn't know anything about national teaching awards, and he certainly didn't know how to fix her panic. He just hoped this mystery woman from the North was as ready for Sarah as she was for the "complicated" kids she'd left behind.

continue

Friday, September 2003

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Primidone. Twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening. Phenytoin, once a day, usually in the morning. Amitriptyline, once at night, and if that decides not to work and you do get a migraine, Sumatriptan for emergencies. Pregabalin three times a day, Baclofen twice a day. Trazodone at night and Sertraline in the morning. 

Even now, 7 years after your initial accident, you still get confused about the order of pills you had to take and what each of them means, because it changes all the time. Still. Like your brain is continuing to deteriorate. 

Maybe it is. 

You didn’t know much about your own condition, because DAI’s aren’t one diagnosis and done, like the flu. Diffuse axonal injuries are entirely different from case to case, depending on what the accident was that caused the injury, impact on the brain, extent of axonal tearing, among other factors your neurologist didn’t mention. To make things easier on the doctor, DAI’s are classified into 3 grades:  

Grade 1: Mild DAI, involving widespread microscopic axonal damage, often in the cerebral cortex and corpus callosum.

Grade 2: Moderate DAI, including Grade 1 damage plus a focal lesion in the corpus callosum.

Grade 3: Severe DAI, which includes Grade 2 findings plus focal lesions in the brainstem, often resulting in coma or death.

You were “easily” a Grade 3, according to your doctor. Not sure if there’s anything easy about severe brain damage, but you didn’t have it in you to be an asshole and complain about his poor wording choices. Basically, you were in Grade 3 because of your coma. Apparently, that immediately puts you in the top category, even if you have no major side effects afterward.

You were in a coma for about a month after the accident, and no, you didn’t remember any of it. That's the most common question you get asked when you tell someone about your injury. “Did you dream?” No. “Did you hear people around you?” No. “Did you understand you were in a coma?” No. 

You remembered being in the car. The arguing. The crying. Trying to push him away from you. And then you remember waking up a month later. 

It’s scary to miss out on a month of your life and not realize a month has passed. Your body has progressed with time, but your brain remains completely locked in where the trauma occurred. You were lucky to wake up with both of your parents by your side, but you didn’t recognize them. Frankly, you thought you may have been kidnapped at first because that was the only logical reaction your brain could come up with for why you were in a hospital with strangers.

Even when everyone was explaining what happened, you still felt completely disconnected from yourself. It felt…it felt a bit like being black out drunk. You drink and you drink and you drink and then you wake up the next day with that all consuming panic because you have no idea what you did the previous night.

It took you a whole day to figure out how to move your eyes left and right. Waking up from a coma isn’t the gasp upright that the movies make it out to be. Your eyes opened after a month, sure, but you were catatonic. You were the bare minimum - not dead. 

It took you a few hours to relearn your name. You didn’t speak for a week, but you remembered hearing the doctors and nurses say your name enough times that you became aware of who you were once more. The pain was delayed too. Your body had spent the past month healing a severe brain injury, a broken leg, broken ribs, two sprained wrists, a shattered cheek bone, and a broken nose, all of which take longer than a month to heal. So, about 6 hours after you woke up, a month's worth of severe pain came rushing back all at once.

You were a completely different person when you first woke up, so much so that you scared yourself. But it is not a sin to be scared of something terrible that happened to you. Right?

Even after you started to regain basic functions over the next months, there were lingering side effects that never went away. The severe tremors in your hands were the worst, but you also got chronic migraines. You found that basic things you used to love, like reading, left you exhausted and drained as if you had just run a marathon. You tend to take a bit longer to respond to people when you’re talking to them, which always made you look like you were brushing them off, when in reality, it took you longer than normal to formulate responses. You had a bit of a stutter too, which made talking hard. 

You cry a lot. Therapy and anti-depressants never really got to the bottom of that. Your neurologist said that brain injuries can cause emotional disregulation, and you hated how you were self aware of your reactions, but you could never seem to stop it. After you lashed out at your loved ones for whatever reason, you were always left with a crushing guilt that was slowly tearing away at your soul. 

So yeah. Grade 3 did make sense.

Today was your first day as a first grade teacher at the elementary school you went to as a child, and you were staring at your organized pill case labelled by day of the week and time. Theo had insisted you keep your medications in the kitchen so that he could keep track of what you were taking. Monday, 7:00 am sharp. This case was green for some reason. Shouldn’t the first color be red? Like the rainbow? That makes more sense than starting with green.

“Good morning,” Theo slowly walked into the kitchen, cracking his back. He didn’t need to wake up until 8 for work, but he insisted on sending you off to your first day like you were a child. Just to make sure nothing went wrong.

“You excited to go change some 6 year olds lives?” He continued.

You snorted and threw the pills in your mouth, leaning over the kitchen sink to get some water to help you down them. You gagged a bit swallowing them - you were never a fan of pills. The whole saying of the more you do it the better you get at it? Wrong. You never got good at swallowing pills. 

“I learned very early on in teaching that you can not save children if they’re parents don’t want to help them. I can control the kids. Not their parents.” 

Theo walked over to the coffee machine and began to start making some.

“You’re so negative you know,” he said it with no frustration in his tone. Just brotherly honesty. “You should look more positive! You haven’t even met these kids' parents yet. And certainly teaching can’t be all that parent heavy. You’re with the kids all day.” 

You shook your head.

“No, no, you see, that’s what I thought too. Until you have three parents coming into the classroom every day after school while you’re trying to grade saying shit like, “Johnny didn’t do well on his MAP Testing and it’s your fault!” Like…m’am. Johnny is 6. I can assure you, his MAP testing scores will not matter in a year. And his poor grade is mostly due to the fact that you can not expect a 6 year old to sit in front of a paper for 3 hours and expect to get the answers right.”

Theo paused to take all of that in.

“What’s MAP testing?”

“Oh, it’s just standardized testing in Massachusetts. Just to see where the kids are at. Every state does it.”

Theo hit the brew switch a few times - the thing was ancient. It probably wasn’t even producing coffee, just fucking rust.

“I don’t remember doing state testing when I was a kid.”

“You definitely did. State testing in Texas came around in the 70s. You’re just old as hell.”

He gave you a side eye and a smirk as he handed you the mysertiously smelling coffee, which you took to be polite. Caffeine doesn’t work on you. Ever since the accident, you’ve had frequent fatigue; no matter how much or how little you sleep, or how much or how little caffeine you drink, you’ll be tired for a large portion of the day. 

“45 is not that old! You’re just around 6 year olds so much your perception of age is fucked up,” he walked over to the refridgertor and opened it. “You want breakfast? Let me make you breakfast.”

You never denied food. Ever. It sounds so cheesy, but you developed a new appreciation for your meals after you spend months unable to chew because your jaw was wired shut. Also because…life was short. You spent most of your childhood and teen years counting calories and picking apart your body in the mirror after you slept over your friend's house and rifled through her older sister's magazine collection. It had been rooted in your development that food was not your friend, but that was the 80s and 90s. You had a mother who never ate ice cream when your family went to Dairy Queen over the summer. A mother who refused to eat out because she couldn’t accurately count the calories. A mother who let you blow out your birthday candles but then made sure everyone else got a slice of cake except you. 

It seemed so important at the time. 

And yet, when you had escaped death and were fighting for your life in the hospital, the last thing on your mind was food. You had (unintentionally) made your diversion of food such a large part of your life that you missed out on so many delicious home meals and sweet treats with friends and new cuisines when your family traveled. You never wanted to deprive yourself again, especially now that–

“I can make you an omlet. You still like it with chives and veggies and stuff?”

You smiled fondly. Theo moved out when he was 22; you only really lived with him until you were 7, so your memories of living in the same house as him were few and far between. But you did remember him making breakfast for you on Sunday mornings because Mom had breakfast club and Dad would always go play golf with his friend Al. He always made you an omlet because he only ever knew how to cook eggs. 

“That sounds great,” you yawned and stretched out your back. “I should get dressed. But you have to promise not to laugh at my teacher's clothes.”

He clicked the stove on.

“I’m really curious why you think I would laugh at you now. Aren’t teacher clothes just…clothes?”

You clicked your tongue.

“Oh no, no,” you said like he wasn’t understanding a social rule amongst teachers. “It develops depending on what age you teach. Kindergarten to…like 2nd grade teachers always dress way different than 3rd grade to 5th grade. Then 6th to 8th, then 9th to 11th, then 12th.”

Three eggs cracked into the sizzling pan. 

“You realize I haven’t been in school in…27 years? I don’t even remember what my Kindergarten teacher looks like.” 

You scowled.

“So that’s actually like the most offensive you can say to a teacher. I always get worried I’m going to put in so much effort into helping them enjoy school and learn and then in a few years I’m just going to be a nobody to them.” 

Maybe that fear was deeper than you thought. Maybe that fear traced all the way back to the days where you could pick up a pencil and write like you used to. 

Theo immediately backtracked.

“No! No, that’s not what I mean. I just think elementary school teachers impact kids in a different way than high school teachers. You may not remember their faces as well or the specific memories from day to day, but those teachers are the root of who you are. Literally, you are around your elementary school teachers more than your parents. They’re the real defining factors of who you become.”

He flipped the eggs over and looked up with a smile.

“You’re important. I promise.” 

You couldn’t hide your ears turning red at the compliment. You never really could be nice to yourself even if you tried. 

“Thanks,” was all you could quietly get out before you went to get dressed before you ate. 

Since you moved in 3 weeks ago, you managed to make the basement your bitch. 

As much as you could make the basement your…bitch. 

Eddie helped you hang up the decorations you brought from your Massachusetts apartment, including your diploma, your White Stripes, Michael Jackson, and Prince posters, polaroids of you and Camilla, and a shelf to hold your *fake* plants. Obviously real plants would have been ideal, but you couldn’t hold anything too heavy, like a watering can. Your memory was failing you, and you knew you’d forget to water them. Why let those poor plants suffer because of your faulty brain? 

Besides. Plants need sun. And you’re living in the basement. 

That was the extent of what was on your walls. Your old bed was a bit bigger than the one Theo got you, so your comforter was too big, but you didn’t mind. You just tucked the extra bit between the wall and the bed and your bed was basically made. Eddie really wanted to buy you new bedding, but you still had a whole classroom to decorate and buy supplies for, because yes, the administration informed you that their teachers cover many of their classroom expenses here. In Massachusetts, the school at least covered the supplies, but that was a private school in a state that was higher ranked in education. You weren’t expecting many privileges coming back here. 

Eddie wanted to go clothes shopping. You dragged him to Staples to buy pencils. 

“Do you think I can use these pencils to gauge my eyes out?” He asked, picking up one of the 20 boxes you threw into the cart. 

“Charming. Probably.”

“Maybe I’ll do it right here, in this Staples. From bordum. Change the trajectory of these boring people's lives.” 

You threw some rulers in the cart. 

“Can you do that when this place is not infested with kids because of back to school season?”

You ended up compromising by letting him go shopping for room decor after, and he paid for half of it.

Now you have some shelves installed in the wall to hold your book collection, a corkboard to hold all of your past students' art work, a dresser, framed photos, new pillows that actually match your old bedding. You even stopped at a second hand record store and bought some new records.

One of your most prized possessions a few years ago was your record of Purple Rain. It had been your moms favorite album (still is) so you grew up listening to it. It was one of those records that would stay with you for your entire life, different songs changing their meaning at different stages of your life.  

The record was horrifically broken after you and Cam drunkenly stumbled into your apartment wall where your records were laying on a shelf. It was devastating. The equivalent of losing a wedding ring. And as your condition grew worse, you spent less time buying things for yourself and more time paying for doctors appointments and medication, so you just never bought a new one. 

“I can’t believe I’ve lived in Dallas for 20 years and I’ve only been in this store once,” Eddie traced the rows of vinyls with his finger. “They have everything here– OH! They have Beyonces new album!”

“Beyonce from Destiny’s Child? She came out with an album?”

Eddie looked at you like you were an alien. 

“I’m amazed at how little you keep up with popular culture. Yes, Destiny’s Child is no more, and yes, Beyonce put out one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard this summer. I’m buying this for myself.” 

“You don’t have a record player.”

“Sure. But you do!”

You opened your mouth to protest, but you spotted the Purple Rain cover across the store. You walked over and picked it up without saying anything like you were walking toward the second coming of Christ. Eddie must have noticed and started following you. 

His voice softened from his usual teasing. 

“You want that?” 

You picked it up and flipped it over.

“It’s $15. That’s ridiculous! The last record I bought was $3!”

Eddie stepped closer to you and took it from your hand, walking over to the register. 

“Wha–” You froze before stumbling after him, “--You don’t have to do that.”

“I’ve been helping you get things all day.”

“That’s…that’s different,” you stuttered. “I needed those things. Want versus need.” 

He started to take his card out.

“Hon. You just made a huge life transition and you’re about to start a new job. You deserve something nice. You do. And, I work. I can afford $15,” he winked, swiped his card, and Prince came home. The most important purchase of the day.

 Actually, no. Most importantly? A carpet. God, it was finally warm in there! 

You went to your brand spanking new dresser and pulled out your designated work clothes drawer. The dresser was small for how many clothes you had, so you had a few neatly folded clothes piles next to it. 

You opted for your favorite sweater; cream, with a crayola box embroidered into it, light wash jeans, and a pink bow tied into your hair. The final touch was your pencil earrings which made you look like a younger Miss Frizzle, the symbol and idol of elementary school teachers everywhere. Then, for a more adult accesory, you put on the watch Camila got you for your first birthday in Mass. It was an antique gold watch that she refused to tell you how much it cost, but it was likely more than her entire paycheck. It was your first reminder in years that you had someone out there who cared for you, even if they didn’t know you that well (yet).

You went upstars to brush your teeth and fix the bow in your hair, and then you stepped back into the kitchen, where Theo was at the kitchen table, reading the Dallas Morning News. Your omlet and a piece of toast were sitting across from him. 

“What’d ya think?” 

You broke the silence and gave a little twirl. 

“You like? Very 1st grade teacher?” 

Theo put the paper down and leaned back like a father watching his daughter go to prom. 

“Very nice!” he declared. “Very Miss Frizzle.”

You couldn’t restrain your giddy fist pump. 

“That’s exactly what I was going for! I’m trying to be like…that teacher.”

He raised an eyebrow without sayig anything.

“You know. Like those teachers who are just balls of sunshine. I had a few coworkers who were that to the kids and they are truly the greatest people I’ve ever met. Something about them…”

“You’re nerding out about your job. Eat your damn eggs girl.” 

You laughed and ate your eggs. 

“I have to stay till’ 5 tonight. On my first day too,” you grumbled, mouth full of eggs. “I can’t believe they do Back to School Night on the first day of school. I’m telling you, 90% of states do it a week before school actually starts.”

Theo had gone back to reading his paper, but he was still listening. 

“That doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t the whole point of those things so the parents and kids can get comfortable with you before jumping into school? These kids don’t even know you yet.” 

“Exactly my point. I barely had enough time to set up my room last week. It looks like a desert. It’s so sad,” you pretended to sniffle. “I miss my sparkly, bedazzled room in Boston. How are these kids going to be excited about school when their classroom is beige!?” 

You noticed Theo’s small smirk behind the paper ad you gasped. 

“Are you laughing at me!?”

He belly laughed, putting the paper down. 

“No! Well yes! Maybe! I’m just remembering when you were deciding what career path to go down after everything and you swore up and down that you did not want to be a teacher and you hated kids. Now it seems like it’s your life's passion.” 

“It is definitely not my life’s passion.” 

Theo’s eyes darted from your pencil earrings to your colorful sweater and hairbow. 

“I need you to look in a mirror right now and get back to me.”

You swallowed your eggs.

“There’s a difference between this being my life passion and me trying to make the most out of a shitty situation. Things don’t get better unless I want them to get better.” 

Your therapist, Dr. Marley, was good. Not great. Not bad. Just…good. Once you had made enough of a recovery physically, it was highly recommended you speak to a therapist to start healing mentally. And she did fine for what you paid her to do. Your outlook on life changed a bit. You were less hopeless. But there were some things that she would never understand and therefore, would never be able to guide you accurately. She knew nothing about being unable to sleep because every time you turned the lights off you were back in that exact moment you blacked out before losing a month of your life. Or being unable to date anymore because you couldn’t bring yourself to forget how your last boyfriend abandoned you for dead?

You weren’t really devastated when Marley told you that she couldn’t see you if you were going to a different state. She wasn’t liscensed in Dallas - you’d live. 

Theo gave a sad smile and sighed. 

“Want a ride to work?”

You swallowed the last of your eggs and stood up. 

“Nah, it’s right up the street. No point.” 

“Yeah, but–”

“--but nothing Theo. I’m okay,” you put your plate in the sink and finished the last of your coffee. “The principal knows about my tremors and migraines. They're giving teachers pizza in the lounge for lunch as a welcome back gift. I packed my extra pain meds, and I have you on speed dial if anything happens.”

Theo looked at you like a well meaning older brother, which he was. Just, he often treated you like a 10 year old going to summer camp for the first time. His eyebrows crinkled together. 

“I’m sorry, I just really hope you don’t have to run into–”

“WERE YOU GOING TO LEAVE WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE!?” 

“--daughter is around that age.” 

You looked between Theo sitting, and Eddie, who had just woken up, in the doorway. You missed everything Theo just said, but it was probably some person your parents knew whose kids had kids that were in elementary school.

“It’s early! I thought you were sleeping.” 

“Bah,” Eddie yawned and walked forward. “I’m a light sleeper. I heard you talking. But it’s okay, I can basically hear through walls. Not your fault. Hey you look cute! Very Ms. Frizzle!” 

You beamed and ran over to hug him. 

“Thank you, thank you. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.” 

Eddie hugged you tight. He always hugged like it was his last one. 

“Go teach some kids. Educate the youth,” he kissed your cheek. “You’ll to great.” 

Yeah. You would.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

October, 1990

The librarians grew tired of you after the third week of the year. But that’s how it usually worked. You had been coming to the library after school every day since middle school, and it always ended with them giving you the keys to lock up. At the start of every year, they pretended to follow the rules, shouting at you not to sit on the floor, or making you leaving 15 minutes before closing. When you never listened, they gave up. You were a good kid! What were you going to do, snort cocaine off a copy of Great Expectations and rob the biography section?

You really just needed a bit long to finish reading The Burden of Proof. Your English teacher recommended it to you after you finished the book the class was reading together about a month before you were expected to finish it, Hamlet, though not a book but a play really. You had read Hamletand many other of Shakespeare's plays as a freshman, but you figured a reread for class wouldn’t hurt. But still, you finished before everyone. 

You were set up at the listening station, the libraries Prince CD playing into the headphones. You were the only one left in the library so you probably could have gone without the headphones, but there was something different about sound going directly into your ears versus the expanse of the library. It helped you focus more. 

The Burden of Proof was a legal thriller about an attorney who has to defend his brother-in-law after his wife committed suicide. He learns about illegal trades, secret transactios, and now he’s about to learn about his wife’s illness he didn’t know about.

“You breakin’ into libraries now?”

You never flinched so hard in your life. You whipped around, pulling the headphones off your head, and promptly losing your place in the book. You opened your mouth to shout at the person for scaring you and being in the library after hours, but then you processed who you were staring at. 

Joel Miller. In the library. With Carver in his hand. 

It sounds like a fucking Clue game. 

“Joel?” was all you could say as your heart tried to slow down with the rest of your body. 

He looked equally as nervous as you, like he wasn’t the one who just gave you the fright of your life. 

“I, um, I thought the library was closed, but I saw your car in the parking lot.” 

You blinked a bit at him - he knew what your car looked like. 

“Why do you…I have so many questions.” 

His nervousness calmed slightly as his lips turned into a teasing smirk. 

“As do I. Like why are you in the library 45 minutes after it closed?” 

You pointed to your book. 

“I just wanted to finish my book. The librarians and I made a deal that as long as I don’t throw a party or damage anything, they let me lock up at night. Which is a shame because this would be a great party venue.” 

You were kidding, obviously, but Joel looked around and raised his eyebrows like he was agreeing with you. 

"Could see it now," Joel said, finally stepping fully into the pool of light at your station. He looked around the fiction section. "Keg by the encyclopedias. Get some speakers hooked up to those listening stations. Reckon the acoustics in here would be somethin' else."

He pulled out the chair next to yours, the heavy wooden legs groaning against the carpet. The chair must be 100 years old. The smell of the outdoors and construction wood drifted off his jacket, clashing with the library’s scent.

"You're actually reading it," you said, nodding toward the Carver book in his hand. You felt a strange little tug in your chest seeing the spine was already creased.

"I'm tryin'," he admitted, his thumb tracing the edge of the cover. "It's... different than the stuff they made us read in class. Like it doesn't feel like a chore. More like eavesdropping on people who aren't doin' too hot." He looked at the CD player on your desk. "What were you listenin' to? Sounded like a riot through the headphones."

"Prince," you said, sliding the headphones toward him across the laminate surface. "Purple Rain. It’s the best thing this library owns, honestly, and I’ve read basically every book here."

Joel looked at the headphones like they were a trap, then back at you. Slowly, he reached out and picked them up. He didn't put them on properly; he just held one ear cup against his ear, leaning down toward the desk.

You hit the 'Play' button.

The heavy, synth-heavy intro of Computer Blue kicked in. You watched his face—the way his brow furrowed as he concentrated, the slight twitch of his jaw. In the absolute silence of the empty building, the tiny, tinny sound of the guitar solo leaked out into the room.

After a minute, he pulled his head back and set the headphones down, a look of genuine impressed surprise on his face. "That’s a lot of noise for one guy."

"He’s a genius, Joel. He plays like twenty-seven instruments."

"Twenty-seven?" Joel let out a low whistle, his smirk returning. "And here I am just tryin' to get through a book with less than two hundred pages. Guess I’m fallin' behind."

He lingered there, the space between you feeling much smaller than it had back in September. The "Mr. Rockstar" bravado from high school felt thinner now, replaced by something a bit more grounded, a bit more curious.

He caught you staring at the Carver book in his hand and his smirk softened. "I'm tryin' with this, by the way. It’s... it's a lot heavier than the stuff they made us read in class. Doesn't feel like a chore. More like eavesdropping on people who aren't doin' too hot."

He looked at the CD player on your desk, then at the thick paperback you were still clutching. "So," he asked, nodding toward the pages. "Since I obviously interrupted the most important part... what’s the story? Who’s the guy on the cover lookin’ so worried about?"

You turned in your seat to face him, your knees almost brushing his denim jeans.

"It’s a mess, Joel," you started, your voice picking up speed. "It’s this lawyer. He comes home and finds his wife... she’s gone. Suicide. But now he’s defending his brother-in-law in this massive case, and everything is starting to bleed together."

You started gesturing with your hands, explaining the secret bank accounts and the mysterious illness the wife had been hiding. "It’s all about how you can live with someone for twenty years and realize you didn’t actually know them at all."

You caught yourself, realizing you were practically lecturing him, and felt a flush heat up your cheeks. You stopped abruptly, your hand resting on the edge of the table near his. "Sorry. I’m nerding out on you. I'm probably boring you to death."

But Joel didn't pull away. He leaned his head back against his hand, watching you with an expression that was way too focused to be faked. His eyes didn't leave your face, tracking every bit of excitement in your expression.

"You aren't borin' me," he said softly, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register. "I like the way you tell it. Makes it sound like a movie."

He reached out with his free hand, his fingers idly tracing a scratch in the wood of the library table, just an inch away from your own hand. 

"You really get into it, don't you? Like you're right there in the room with 'em."

"That’s the whole point of a good book, isn't it? To be somewhere else for a while?"

Joel's smile faded into something a bit more thoughtful. 

"Yeah. I reckon I'm startin' to see that."

The little digital display on the CD player glowed a steady 06, and the faint, tinny sound of Prince's guitar was still whispering out of the headphones you'd abandoned on the desk. For a second, neither of you said anything. The library felt massive and silent, but the space between the two of you was buzzing.

"Well," Joel said, finally breaking the spell with a quiet huff of a laugh. "As much as I like hearin' you talk... if you stay in here much longer, the sun's gonna be up before you find out the ending. And I'm pretty sure I saw a cop car do a slow lap around the parking lot five minutes ago. They probably think you’re in here robbin' the place."

"I told you, I have the keys!" you laughed, finally sliding the book into your bag and standing up.

Joel stood up with you, seemingly reluctant to break the proximity. He reached over and hit the 'Stop' button on the CD player for you, his hand lingering on the machine for a beat.

"C'mon, bookworm," he said, gesturing toward the dark aisles. "Tell me the rest while we walk to the car. I wanna know if this lawyer guy ever figures out what his wife was hidin'."

As you walked together through the shadows of the Reference section, your shoulder occasionally brushed against his jacket. He was still carrying the Carver book, and you realized he wasn't just carrying it like garbage, but rather holding it like a treasure.

You took the lead through the maze of shelves, the heavy ring of keys jangling in your hand like a rhythmic counterpoint to the quiet. When you reached the heavy glass front doors, you fumbled with the lock for a second, your hands still a little shaky from the adrenaline of the scare and the weight of his attention.

Before you could reach for the handle, Joel’s arm extended over your head. He pushed the door open, the October air rushing in to meet you both, and held it steady with his shoulder. It was a classic, gentlemanly gesture that felt completely at odds with the guy you remembered from American Classics - the one who used to spend entire periods trying to see how far he could lean his chair back without falling over.

"After you, Warden," he said, his voice dropping an octave as you stepped out into the night.

The parking lot was washed in the sickly orange glow of the streetlights. Your car sat lonely under a flickering bulb, looking small and a little worn. As you walked toward it, the confusion you’d been pushing down finally bubbled up to the surface. It didn't make sense. You were the girl who sat on library floors and argued with teachers about the symbolism of a ghost in a play. He was... well, he was Joel Miller.

You stopped at your driver-side door and turned, clutching your bag to your chest like a shield.

"Joel?"

He stopped a few feet away, his hands disappearing back into his pockets. "Yeah?"

"Why are you here?" you asked, and it came out blunter than you intended. "I mean, I get that you saw my car, but you graduated. You have a life. You could be literally anywhere else on a Wednesday night besides sitting in a dark library listening to me talk about a legal thriller."

The teasing smirk he’d been wearing all night faltered. He looked down at the pavement, kicking a stray pebble with the toe of his boot. 

"I told you," he said, his voice quiet. "I’m tryin' to read more. Figured the person who gave me the book might be the best person to ask if I got stuck."

He looked back up at you, his eyes searching yours through the messy fringe of his hair. "And maybe I just missed the way you look when you're tryin' to explain something you love. You get this... this look on your face. I noticed it in English last year. It’s like the rest of the world doesn't matter as much as the story."

He took a half-step closer, the orange light catching the sincerity in his expression. "Is it that hard to believe I’d want to be around that for a bit?"

You stared at him, your heart doing a slow, heavy thud against your ribs. You didn't have a witty comeback. You didn't have a literary quote to sum this up.

"I... I guess not," you managed to say.

Joel’s smirk returned, though it was softer this time, more personal. "Good. 'Cause I still haven't finished the Carver book, and I'm probably gonna have a lot of questions about the ending."

He backed away slowly toward his own truck, a beat-up Chevy parked a few rows over. "See you tomorrow, bookworm. Don't let the legal trades keep you up too late."

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Monday, September 2003.

“I figured I would give you another brief tour on your first day. I know Ellen gave you a tour when you came in to decorate your classroom right?”

Karen Foster was not the principal of Whiman while you were a student there, but she certainly had been principal for a very long time. She was older, with clearly dyed hair to fight the gray, a splotchy attempt at spray tan, and enough jewlery on her neck and arms that you wondered why she wasn’t being weighed down. Despite all the jewlery, she had none on her fingers, but the longest finger nails you had ever seen in your life.

“A brief one. Just showed me where the lounge, bathrooms, and printer are.” 

“Bah,” her wrists clanged as she walked down the hall. “Sounds like Ellen. Always doing the bare minimum. Come, I’ll give you a real tour.” 

Ellen Peters is the Assistant Principal, who, you just learned, is not liked by Karen. She seemed nice enough when you met her, so you wanted to push for more. Probably not smart on the first day. 

“These are the Kindergarden rooms,” she pointed to a few rooms with colorful walls and stuffies and beanbags. “I don’t know how your old school did this, but here, the Kindergarden is pretty isolated so the kids don’t get overwhelmed. The 1st grade and 2nd grade spend the most time together.”

You weren’t entirely sure what that meant. Your old school never combined grades like that, but it seemed pointless to argue about. You moved past the kindergarten toward the familiar 1st grade rooms, which you had seen before.

“This is your homeland! You’re 1C so–” Karen peered into the room. “--Oh my goodness your decor is so cute! Did you buy all of this?”

She took a further step in, taking in your color coordinated room. At your old school, since they paid for many expenses, you tried to change up the decor of the room every year, but since Whitman was expecting you to pay for everything out of pocket, you just recycled your pale pink theme from last year. 

At the front of the room, below the whiteboard, was a white organizer with alternating pink containers in some slots, and free reading books (alphabetical order of course), in the other spaces. The containers were filled with free play toys and sensory toys, so, that whole organizer was somewhat of the kids corner. Resting on top of the organizer were a couple of crayon stuffies, with different cartoon expressions on their faces. In your experience, kids didn’t want to be filled with the idea that they have to be happy all of the time and something is wrong if they aren’t. By normalizing different emotions through things they gravitate toward, like stuffed animals, it creates healthier emotional regulation.

There was a pastel rainbow numberline to 100 wrapped around the room, just above the whiteboard, and letter cards in a matching pastel color on top of that. On the far right side of your whiteboard was a calendar for the kids to put popsicle sticks in for every new day of school and to track how many days were left. 

On the floor, right in front of the whiteboard was a soft pink rug with the alphabet printed on it and a corresponding animal for the kids to sit on during morning meetings. 

Of course the desks were in the middle of the classroom, and then the back of the room, where your desk was, was where you kept all of your teacher's things. You had a pink rolling cart that held your tape, staplers, scissors, dry erase markers, and colored pencils. There was a filing cabinet next to it that came with the room which held all of the various papers you needed, from blank white paper to the morning work you were planning to give out to the kids. On your own desk there was, yes, a pale pink file sorter, where you kept all important documentation about your students, meetings, etc. You tried to decorate your space as nicely as you could; a framed photo of you and Cami from a teachers retreat one summer, one of you and Theo from when you were kids, and a photo you took of your friend Masie at the Isabella Gardener Stewart Museum in Boston. You hadn’t heard from Masie in a while since she moved to California with her boyfriend, but she was still near to your heart. 

“You should have been an interior designer lady,” Karen laughed and picked up one of the crayon plushies. 

“Most of it I brought when I moved back here.”

“Oh I wouldn’t doubt it. I was wondering where you got all the money for this, but it must have been that fancy private school job huh?” She laughed and you couldn’t tell if she was being passive aggressive or was making conversation. Either way, she continued out for the rest of the tour.

“Theres 4 other 1st grade teachers - Jen Crenshaw, Daniella LaPorta, Hailey Jones, and Anissa Marquez. They’re all wonderful. Daniella about your age, I think, I don’t really know. She’s 1D, so her class is right next to yours. Maybe make a friend!” 

You chuckled to yourself. 

“Maybe. Yeah. Sounds nice.”

At the very end of the hall were the 2nd grade rooms. A woman maybe a few years older than you was standing outside of her room pinning big letters to the corkboard in the hallway. She had big thick glasses, and dark bangs that went so low on her face you wondered how they weren’t obscuring her vision. 

“Oh hi!” She grinned, “Are you the one who replaced Maureen?” 

You raised an eyebrow and looked at Karen. Were you? You had no idea if Maureen was the woman who taught in the 1st grade here before you. You had low expectations for this school, and somehow, there was still room for your expectations to be lower.

“Courtney, this is Y/N L/N,” Karen motioned to you like she was presenting a sculpture. “Y/N, this is Courtney Bliss, 2nd grade teacher.”

Fuck, that was such a cool name. Imagine having a teacher named Miss Bliss.

You extended your hand to her and she shook it. She was genuinely smiling, not like she was pretending to be kind because her boss was right there, but because she was actually excited to see a new face.

And she didn’t recognize you. She must not be a local. 

Your accident was big news in your small town when it first happened. How could it not be? The girl who was reported to be a star was flung out of the windshield of her car! She’s in a coma! How tragic! And then your parents thought it would be a genius idea to file lawsuits and draw even more attention to you. If you were from this side of Dallas and you didn’t know what happened, it likely meant you weren’t local. 

Karen knew you when she hired you. Not because she knew you personally, but because she had heard your story.

“Oh honey, that’s why you’re worried about working here? Your hands shake a little?” Karen had laughed on the phone. “I remember reading the news with the photos of you all bloody in the hospital bed when they said you probably wouldn’t even survive. I don’t care if you have shaky hands mama.”

It was  hard not to be embarrassed that your employer had seen photos of you that you didn’t even remember. But you simultaneously knew that those were the worst photos of you to exist. It felt egotistical to be focused on your looks whe you were about to die, but insecurity follows you to the grave apparently. 

“It’s so great to meet you!” Courtney beamed. “I know today will be kind of hectic. A lot is crammed into the first day - how long have you been a teacher for?”

“This is my 7th year. I was working in Masscahusetts, but I’m from here.” 

“Massachusetts! Gosh, I’ve always wanted to go to New England. Isn’t it beautiful there? I heard you guys have lovely falls. I’m from North Carolina originally, but I’ve only ever taught in Texas. This is my 3rd year–”

“--I’m sorry Courtney, but I really need to finish my tour before the school day starts,” Karen plastered on a sarcastic grin. “Why don’t you two connect over lunch? 1st and 2nd grade have lunch at the same time.”

Ah. That’s what she meant by the two grades being combined a lot. 

Courtney’s smile dropped and your heart broke a little. She looked a bit like a sad puppy with those huge eyes and faint pount. 

“Let’s definitely talk at lunch,” you extended a hand to her wrist and smiled reassuringly. “I would love to learn the ropes around here.”

She perked up a bit and let out a squeaky ‘okay’ before returning to hanging letters on the corkboard. 

As Karen took you upstairs to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade rooms, you felt a familiar tingling sensation in your hands. The tingling was the first warning shot. You knew it better than your own heartbeat at this point - that subtle, electric thrum that started in your fingertips and crawled up your wrists. It was the ghost of the windshield, the ghost of the hospital bed Karen Foster seemed so fond of mentioning, reminding you that your body still kept its own frantic tally of the past.

By the time you reached the third-grade landing, the tingling had sharpened into a fine, jagged tremor.

"Now, the upper elementary wing is a bit more... let's say, 'spirited,'" Karen was saying, her bracelets clattering like a hardware store in a windstorm as she gestured toward a row of lockers. "The fifth graders think they own the place. You just have to show them who’s boss from day one. I always say, don't smile until Thanksgiving."

She laughed, a harsh, nasal sound that echoed off the linoleum. You didn't laugh back like you had been pretending to. You couldn't. You were too busy trying to figure out what to do with your hands. Even though Karen knew that this was a problem you had, you didn’t want her to see them just yet. Not the first day. It would make you look incapable.

You tucked them into the pockets of your jeans, but you could feel your thighs vibrating from the force of the shake. You pulled them out and latched them behind your back, gripping your right wrist with your left hand so hard your knuckles turned white. It didn't stop the movement; it just contained it to a small, violent jolt behind your spine.

"Are you alright, dear? You've gone a bit pale," Karen said, pausing in front of the library entrance. "Is the Texas heat getting to you already? I know Massachusetts is practically the North Pole, but you grew up here!"

"I'm fine," you said, forcing a smile that felt tight. "Just first-day jitters. I think I'm just anxious to get into my room and do a final check of the morning work."

You shifted your grip, moving your hands to the straps of your shoulder bag, white-knuckling the leather. You used the weight of the bag to anchor your arms against your ribs, a trick you’d learned years ago. If you kept your elbows locked, the tremor looked more like a restless energy- a teacher who just couldn't wait to get started - rather than a neurological attack.

"Well, we’re almost done. This is the media center, though the kids still call it the library because they don't know any better," Karen rolled her eyes. She kept talking, pointing out the computer lab (that she made sure to mention she payed SO much money for) and the music room, but her voice was becoming a drone. All you could focus on was the pace of the shake. It felt like your bones were trying to hum their way out of your skin.

You survived the walk back down the stairs by focusing on the sensation of the railing under your palm. You used it to guide yourself, hoping Karen didn't notice how heavily you were leaning on it.

"And here we are," Karen said, stopping back at the door to 1C. She turned to you, her long, nails clicking against her clipboard. "Good luck today. Don't let the little monsters see you sweat. And remember…if your hands get to acting up, just sit 'em on a desk. No one’s looking that close anyway."

She gave you a wink that felt like a slap in the face and clattered off toward the front office.

The moment her heels faded into the distance, you slipped into your classroom and turned the lock. The "click" was the most beautiful sound you’d heard all morning.

You made it three steps toward your desk before your legs gave out. You sank onto the soft pink rug, the one with the alphabet animals. You sat right on top of the 'D' for Dog and the 'E' for Elephant, and finally, you let your hands go.

They were dancing. A wild, frantic blur in your lap. You held them up in front of your face, watching the fingers twitch and jump in the morning light filtering through the blinds.

It wasn't just the tremor. It was the weight of being back. It was Karen talking about your bloody body in a newspaper like it was a fun piece of trivia. It was the "fancy private school" comments. It was the terror that these kids would look at you and see someone broken before they saw someone who could teach them how to read.

A sob broke out of your throat, jagged and hot. You pressed your shaking palms against your eyes, trying to shove the tears back in, but they leaked through your fingers anyway. You cried for the girl in the hospital bed, for the move across the country, and for the fact that even after seven years of being a professional, you were still hiding in a classroom at 7:30 AM, terrified that your own body would give you away.

You looked at the crayon plushies on the organizer. The blue one had a sad, downturned mouth. You’d put it there to normalize emotions, to tell six-year-olds it was okay to not be okay.

"Real healthy regulation," you whispered into the empty room, your voice trembling as much as your hands.

You stayed there for five minutes, breathing in the scent of new crayons and expo markers, until the first bell rang in the distance. You wiped your face with the heels of your hands, stood up, smoothed your skirt, and walked to the door.

You had 180 seconds before the first 1st grader walked in. You placed your hands flat on the cool surface of your desk, leaned your weight into them until they stayed still, and waited.

Continue

“I think it’s time we had a little chat about Marcus.”

Is it possible to die standing up? To feel every step of your heart stopping, your veins shrinking and your blood thinning? Is it possible to die while still breathing? 

“That was an order, daughter.”

He sneered your label, and you realized that you don’t think you ever heard him call you his daughter. He had called you girl…child…fotze (cunt in his native German). But he never called you daughter. 

When he took a step forward, likely to grab your arm, you flinched and began to follow him. This may not be about your relationship, you tried to reassure yourself. This could be about Thomas’s concerns with taking him off of your service. Or perhaps his work performance. Maybe your father wanted information about him that he thought you might have due to all of the time you and him spent together with him watching you. 

But when the door slammed shut behind you, you knew deep down what your answer was. 

Your father walked toward his desk, but he did not sit. He simply rested with his palmed flat against the wood, looking down at nothing. He was thinking. 

“You have met Ludovica, no?”

You couldn’t withstand your head tilt. Ludovica? The girl who was training to replace Karoline? She was practically a ghost to you - she moved around the palace so silent you could mistake her for a window curtain. And she was always there, of course, doing her duties as a servant girl by polishing the silver and carrying messages to Karoline to give to you. But you never really saw her or addressed her. 

“Karoline’s girl?” you whispered. Your insanity was no longer an acting choice as you felt your knees shake and your balance failing. “She helps Karoline with duties around the palace.”

He nodded slowly and smiled. 

“She is a very observant servant. I never speak much to the servants around here…let them keep to their own gossip and lowley personal lives. It’s certainly no important matter to me!,” he laughed to himself. “So imagine my surprise when a dirty child, no older than fourteen comes to me - directly, mind you - to tell me that she went to your chambers to deliver a message from your mother. She thought she heard you crying…that you were having one of your recent fits.”

He looked up, eyes bearing into yours. There was no more smile on his face. 

“Imagine my confusion when she told me that those were not cries of insanity..but cries of pleasure from my guard….my most trusted, loyal guard…being inches deep in my own daughter.”

Everything shrunk around you. Or were you growing? The desk shrunk, the paintings lining the walls shrunk, even your father shrunk. You could feel your cheeks flush with embarrassment. You had checked the halls. You had listened for boots. But you hadn't checked for a child who could weave through the darkness without a sound.

“She was very descriptive. The way he held you,” he sounded equally nauseated. “The way his hands were in your hair. She said he looked at you like he had known you for decades.” 

The fear for your own life was brief, quickly replaced with fear for Marcus. He was in the city, with his beloved sister and nephew. He thought he had found a moment of peace. He had no idea that the world was ending. 

“I find myself wondering,” he continued. “If he is actually guarding you like I requested he do, or if he is simply waiting for the right moment he can steal what belongs to the crown.”

No. No, he had it all wrong. 

“Father, please,” you fell to your knees, the fabric of your riding habit pooling around you. “Ludovica…she’s just a child! A silly little child who makes up stories like fairytales–”

Damian was in front of you in an instant, his hand catching your jaw so hard your teeth ached. He forced your face up, staring into your eyes almost triumphant.

“Do not lie to me while you still smell of him,” he hissed. “I can see it in the way you breathe. You aren't acting now, are you? This isn't the madness talking. This is the fear of a woman who knows her lover is a dead man walking.”

He leaned in closer. His breath was foul and almost acidic. 

“I know where he is. I know that he lives with his sister…what is her name?” he pretended to think. “Elise?”

You let out a loud sob. He knew everything. You had put the entire Acacius family in danger just by who you are. 

“If you lie to me again, I will have them burn that house to the ground with everyone inside it. But if you tell me the truth... if you tell me every word of treason he whispered into your ear... I might let him reach the dungeons alive.”

His grip on your jaw tightened and you could feel his fingers grinding into the muscles in your jaw. 

“I’ve seen men like Marcus in every campaign I’ve ever led. They wait for a crack in the foundation, and then they slip through. He didn't look for a princess to love…no. Men like him don’t love. He knew you were broken from your time in France - he knew your mind was a sieve of state secrets.”

His logic was so cynical you wondered if he was even concerned about the potential of a scandal. He wasn’t thinking about age gap, or affair. He was accusing him of high treason.

“He’s been milking you, hasn't he?” Damian hissed. “Using those ‘tender’ moments Ludovica saw to pull the secrets of my council from your pathetic memory. He’s not a lover. He’s a scavenger. And the penalty for a soldier who barters in state secrets is not the dungeon. It is the block. I will have his head mounted on the city gates before the sun rises.”

“No,” you choked out quickly. The fear for Marcus’s life finally eclipsed the fear of your father’s wrath. You would rather lose your dignity than let him die for a lie. You couldn't let him be a traitor in the eyes of history when he was the only thing that made you feel human.

"I wonder how long a man like that lasts when the pain isn't a memory from a trench, but a reality in my cellar. I’ll start with his hands, I think,” he grinned. “Those hands you seem so fond of. One finger for every lie he told you. One for every secret he tried to pull from your mouth."

You sobbed out, tears streaming down your cheeks fast. You were racing through every possible exit. If you stayed silent, Marcus would be killed for treason. If you confessed the depth of the love, your father would use it as torture while he killed him. 

"And then there's the sister," Damian continued. "Elise, isn't it? And the little baby... Henri. Treason is a blood-stain you know. It doesn't stop at the soldier. It ruins the whole line. I’ll have them brought in. I’ll make Marcus watch while I decide what to do with a child who was born into a family of spies."

"No!" The scream tore out of you as you clutched the fabric of your skirts. "Leave them! They have nothing to do with this!"

"Then give me the truth," he hissed. "Was it love, or was it a contract?"

You could still taste Marcus on your lips, you could feel his thigh on your cunt. To deny the love was to spit on the only thing that had kept you sane. To admit it was to give your father the ultimate weapon.

You were drowning again, the bricks tied to your feet, the water rising. You looked at your father, seeing the monster who had sent his sixteen yar old daughter to be a spy while his heir stayed safe at home.

"It was love," you pleaded. "It was only love. He is the only thing in this palace that isn't a lie! He doesn't want your secrets, Father! He wants me!"

Damian didn't strike you. He didn't scream. He just stared at you for a long second. You sounded like a whiny child. Maybe you were. You didn’t have much of a stable childhood afterall.

"Love," he sneered. He stood up, smoothing the front of his coat. "You truly are your mother's daughter…too sentimental to be strong."

He began to pace the room. You watched him through a veil of tears, your stomach coiling into a knot. 

"You think Marcus found a woman worth staying alive for," Damian mocked you. "You think he saw a broken princess and decided to be her savior? I didn't choose Marcus to guard you because he was the most loyal. I chose him because he was the most efficient. And because he, above all others, knew exactly how little you were worth."

The room seemed to grow colder. No. This is a lie. He’s trying to break me. Your internal monologue screamed against the tide, but your father’s voice was like a scalpel, peeling back the skin of your memories.

"Do you remember the night you were pulled from the cell in France? The rescue mission that cost me thirty of my best men? The mission I supposedly ordered out of 'fatherly love'?"

You didn’t remember that night well. You were unconscious for a large part of it. 

"Marcus was the one I assigned to lead that unit. And do you know what he said to me when I gave him the order? He didn't jump at the chance to save his princess. He fought me. He stood right where you are now and told me that resources shouldn't be wasted on a spoiled, incompetent girl who had clearly failed her mission. He told me you were a liability. That a princess who let herself be caught wasn't worth the lives of his soldiers."

Liar, you thought, though your hands began to shake. He wouldn't. He told me he'd found someone worth staying alive for. But the doubt was a drop of ink in clear water, spreading fast. Marcus had been a veteran. He had been a cynic. He had seen the worst of the war.

"But it’s the rescue itself that I find most... illuminating. Marcus and his men reached the cell block while you were still being... 'handled' by that French guard. Do you remember?"

You closed your eyes, the memories of all of the assaults rushing back. You felt all of the guards hands on you at once.

"Marcus was there," your father whispered. "He was in the the hallway, his men at his back, their rifles cocked. One of his lieutenants wanted to move. He wanted to stop the assault. But Marcus held them back. He put his hand on the boy’s chest and told them to wait. He said the timing wasn't right. He said that a few more minutes of your 'disgrace' didn't outweigh the strategic risk of a premature breach."

The bile rose in your throat and you felt a physical sickness, a churning in your gut that made you want to retch onto your dress. Marcus, the professional. Marcus, the man who knew the cost of a battlefield. Standing there. Watching.

He watched.

"He let it happen. He stood by the door and watched the hall while you were being violated, because to him, you weren't a person. You were a package to be recovered, and he didn't care if the contents were damaged so long as the seal remained intact."

Damian let out a soft, mocking sigh, his fingers grazing your cheek in a parody of a caress.

"He didn't find someone worth staying alive for. He found a woman so desperate for a kind word that she would never suspect the man who stood by while she was ruined. He didn't fall in love with you. He’s been performing a penance. Or perhaps... he just enjoyed the irony of being the one to finally 'guard' what he chose not to save."

You couldn't speak. You couldn't move. You were staring at the floor, the world dissolving into a blur - the heat of his lips from an hour ago now felt like a brand of shame. Every time he touched you, every time he cried for you... was it all a lie? 

"He doesn't love you," Damian hissed the final blow. "He pities you. And there is nothing more pathetic in this world than a woman who mistakes a man's guilt for his heart."

As the truth flooded your brain, you realized that Marcus always seemed to know exactly which questions to avoid when you spoke of the "before."

The timing wasn't right.

The night of the rescue. The cell door. You remember the smell of the guard - tobacco - and the way the stone floor felt like ice against your back. But there was something else. A sound. You had thought it was the pipes, or perhaps you were losing your mind.

It wasn't. It was the sound of a safety being clicked on a rifle. It was the sound of men waiting. Your man, waiting.

You had opened your soul to him. In the quiet hours, when the palace felt like a grave, you had whispered to him about the shame, about the way the French guard’s hands felt, about the torture. You had confessed the deepest, most jagged parts of your trauma to the very man who had stood three feet away behind a wooden door and watched his pocket watch while it happened.

You feelt a vacuum opening up in your chest. The "mercy" you gave him today…the way you had straddled him, the way you had taken control…it wasn't a romantic surrender. It was a farce. He had let you "use" him because he knew he owed you a debt that could never be paid in blood, only in the sick, twisted theater of his own guilt. He let you lead because he knew he had led you into a slaughterhouse years ago.

You look at your father, and for the first time, the King doesn't look like a monster. He looks like a mirror. He’s showing you the world as it truly is: a place where "love" is just a word men use to dress up their casualties.

Marcus didn't save you. He waited for the monster to finish so he wouldn't have to get his own hands dirty. And then he spent months watching your misery, likely amused by how easy it was to trick a girl whose spirit he’d personally seen broken.

You feel sick. Truly, physically sick. The fire in the hearth feels like it’s miles away, and you are back in that cell, the water rising, and the only man who can save you is standing in the hall, waiting for the clock to strike.

You didn't even have time to reach for a basin before the bile hit the marble, splattering against the hem of your skirts. You were retching, your body convulsing as it tried to physically expel the truth, the memory of Marcus’s touch, and the weight of every "I love you" that now tasted like mouthfuls of ash.

You collapsed further, your forehead nearly touching the floor, another wave of nausea rolling through you. You waited for the punch. You waited for Damian to scream about the mess, to call you a pig, to kick you away from his boots as he had a thousand times before.

Instead, you felt something impossible.

A hand gathered the loose, sweat-dampened strands of your hair. It wasn't a violent yank. It was firm, pulling the tresses back away from your face so you wouldn't soil yourself further.

You froze, your breath hitching in a sob that tasted of lemon. Through the stinging tears, you looked up, and the world finally shattered.

Your father was looking down at you. He didn't speak. He didn't offer a single word of comfort or a hollow apology. But the glint in his eyes that told you he was enjoying thia had vanished, replaced by a stillness. His features weren't twisted in a sneer or a laugh. For the first time in your life, he looked at you with pity. 

The worst part was, it was the look of a man who was telling the absolute truth.

If Damian had laughed, you could have clung to the hope that this was a game. You could have told yourself he was just trying to steal the one thing that kept you sane. But your father had never felt anything but contempt for you. He had never held your hair; he had never looked at you with anything but disappointment.

For him to stand here now, performing this small, wordless act of care while you were at your most pathetic, was the ultimate confirmation. He wasn't lying because he didn't need to. The truth was enough to kill you.

Marcus had watched.

As you heaved again, your father’s hand remained steady, anchoring you to the floor of a world that no longer made sense. You saw Marcus in your mind again, but not the man in the blue house. The soldier in the dark hallway. You saw him checking his pocket watch while you screamed. You realized why his French was so perfect - he’d been standing outside those cell doors for years, listening to the enemy, listening to them, listening to you. He had heard the exact moment your spirit snapped, and he had waited for the silence before he finally walked in to play the hero.

You were alone. You had always been alone. And the man you had worshipped…the man you had offered your soul to, was the architect of the very nightmare he claimed to be saving you from.

"We had a plan," you trembled. "It wasn't just a dream."

You closed your eyes, and for a second, you were back in the blue house. You saw the mismatched mugs. You saw the way the light hit Marcus’s face when he looked at Henri. 

"We said that when Thomas inevitably sent me away for my ‘madness’, I would request Marcus to be my guide. We were going to leave on the night the carriage was meant to take me to the coast," your voice was climbing into a register of hysteria. " He was going to take me to the sea. He said the salt air would wash the palace out of my lungs. He said I’d never have to be a princess again. I’d just be... his."

You hiccuped and gagged again. 

“We were going to marry in secret. In a church with no gold on the walls. He promised me silence, Father. He promised me that no one would ever touch me again without my leave. I gave him everything. I gave him my soul because I thought he was the only one who had ever seen it and didn't want to break it. I thought he was the miracle. I thought God had finally seen me and sent a man who could look at a damaged girl and see a wife."

Damian remained silent, but his hand continued to stroke your spine. He didn't interrupt. 

He didn't stand. He shifted his weight, his boots creaking, and lowered himself until he was sitting back on his heels at your level. He got onto the floor with you, his expensive clothes dragging through the mess you had made. He reached out and tucked a stray, damp hair behind your ear.

"The sea," he echoed. "A romantic notion. The kind of lie a man tells when he knows he has already stolen everything else."

"Listen to me." he spoke gently. "You must not go through with this plan. You must stay."

You turned your head slightly, looking at him with eyes that were hollow. "Stay? To marry Thomas? To be a queen of a court that hates me?"

"Yes," Damian said matter-of-factly.. "You may not love Thomas. You may find him dull, or cold, or a stranger to your heart. But at least Thomas is not a liar. He has never stood in a hallway and watched you be raped."

He stopped his hand, his fingers splaying flat against your back, pinning you there.

"If you go with Marcus, you are not fleeing to freedom. You are fleeing with the man who watched you break and called it 'timing.' Every time he touches you, you will wonder if he is remembering the sound of your screams. Every time he kisses you, you will taste the smoke of the cell. You will spend your life in a cottage with a man who would sell you to the enemy in a heartbeat."

He leaned back just an inch.

"Do not follow through with the plan. Stay here. Marry Thomas. Play the part of the dutiful daughter. And if you do this? I will let him live. I will let Marcus walk away. I will let him go and live out his days in the city, rotting with the guilt of what he did to you."

To stay was to live in a gilded cage with a man you didn't love. To go was to live in the arms of a man who had betrayed the very core of your being.

"Give me your word," Damian whispered, his hand lifting to touch your chin, forcing you to look at his face. "Choose the safety of a man who doesn't know you, over the 'love' of the man who knew you and chose to let you be destroyed."

He made you feel valuable and he lied. 

That was the sharpest knife, the one he had buried the deepest. He had looked at you and told you that you were worth staying alive for. He had given you a future. 

And all the while, he had been carrying the sound of your screams in his pocket.

How had he done it? How had he looked at you every morning, watching you struggle to breathe, watching you perform your insanity for the court, and not choked on his own heart? Every time you had opened up to him about the cell, every time you whispered about the way the French guard touched you, the way the dark felt like it was swallowing you whole, he wasn't comforting you. He was replaying it. He was matching your words to the scene he had directed from the hallway.

And you had loved him for it. You had let him taste your mouth, the same mouth that had begged for a savior who was standing three feet away, deciding you wasn't worth the risk.

You had never been loved. Not by your father, who used you as a pawn. Not by your brother, who used you as a target. And not by Marcus, who had used you as a way to quiet his own shame.

You were so cold. You were so incredibly, horribly alone. You thought you had found a way out, a path to the sun, but you had just been walking deeper into the cellar, led by the hand of the man who had held the key the whole time.

The debate rages within you, between the girl who was saved and the woman who was betrayed. For a moment, a small, dying part of you pleads for him. It whispers that he was a soldier, that he was under orders, that he has spent every second since then trying to atone. It reminds you of the way he looked at you, the way he held you, the way he kissed you. Maybe he loves you enough now to make up for the man he was then, the voice suggests. Maybe the future is still real.

The scent of your own sickness on the floor reminds you of the reality.

How do you forgive the man who stood three feet away while your life was being stolen? How do you look into the eyes of a man who told your father that you weren't worth the lives of his men? That you were a spoiled, worthless asset? A…A brat!

If you forgive him, you are agreeing with him. You are saying that your body, your spirit, and your dignity were a fair price to pay for "strategic timing." If you go with him, every night spent in that cottage would by scarred by what you now know. When the room goes dark, you won’t see his face; just the shadow outside the door. You’ll wonder if he’s holding you because he wants you, or because he’s still trying to stop the ringing in his ears from that night. 

You cannot forgive him. You cannot love a man who chose his job over your soul. You cannot build a life on a foundation of cowardice and silent tears. Marcus didn’t just let you be assaulted; he validated every terrible thing your father and brother ever said about you. 

Thomas is a stranger. He is a political transaction, a man who will likely never know the sound of your true voice. But your father is right - Thomas is not a liar. He hasn't stood by while you were raped and tortured. With Thomas, you can be a distant figure of power. With Thomas, you don't have to wonder if the hands touching you are trying to wipe away the blood they watched spill.

You will stay. You will marry the prince you do not know to escape the guard who knows you too well. You will let Marcus live, as your father promised. You will let him go back to his sister and his nephew and his home. You will let him live with the weight of his own guilt, knowing that you finally woke up and saw him for exactly what he is.

continue

Saturday, August 2003

“Is that it?”

Your brother Theo plopped the last remaining moving box on the tiny, second hand bed. Never in your life did you think you would be living in a storage room. Actually, never in your life did you think that you would be living in your brother and brother-in-law's basement that they had kept boxes of old shit in. But here you are. 

You dusted your hands off on your jeans even though Theo did most of the heavy lifting. The room was practically one giant dust ball – if you inhaled for a bit too long, a 50 year old dust nuke would fly into your lungs. You looked around at the grey, concrete walls and the concrete floor. The only thing that was set up down here was the bed. Theo wanted to let you decorate it to your hearts contentment. It’s hard enough moving in with your older brother when you’re pushing 30, he had said. 

There were a lot more things in your life that were much worse than moving in with your brother. But, the effort was sweet and you were grateful that you had someone to move in with rather than being stuck in a facility with the elderly, so you would decorate, god damn it, and you would decorate like it was your last time ever touching a throw pillow. 

“Should be. I really could have helped you–”

Theo shook his head, smiling.  

“Absolutely not. You callin’ me weak? Can’t lift a bunch of boxes?”

You smacked him in the arm. 

“I am not! I’m just saying, if I’m living here, I won’t ask much of you, just…”

Treat me like a human.

“...I’m not incapable. Dr. Madlock upped my medication after what happened, and I’ve only had a few shakes since.”

You don’t remember when you and Theo  started calling your tremors, ‘shakes.’ When you were first in the hospital, your parents had become extremely overbearing with physical therapy, and occupaional therapy, and medication, and therapy, and lawsuits against…fucking everyone. It was a lot. When Theo started calling the tremors, something that ruined your life and everything you worked for, ‘shakeys,’ it just made everything lighter. How silly is it to cry over having the shakeys? 

Theo plopped himself next to a box on the bed, preparing to have a conversation you did not want to have. Your parents had him when they were young and they had you on the older side. A 15 year age gap meant he was always more of an uncle figure than a brother. He was very protective of you, not that you ever needed much protection until the accident. You always were good at holding your own until you could literally not hold anything.

“She took you off the beta blockers?” 

Theo did not know what beta blockers were. But, he did listen when you spoke, which was enough for you now. You sighed, letting your guard down slightly and sank down onto your bed. 

You’d think having hands that don’t function correctly, you’d be using them less. But more and more you found yourself fidgeting with your hands like you were testing if the tremors went away. You’d rub your fingers against your palms and crack your knuckles and massage your palms. You used to get your nails done before the accident, but for the last few years, you had to cut them short. Getting poked in the eye while you’re out of control of your own body is legitimately one of the most uncomfortable sensations ever. 

“Yeah. That’s why the whole…episode happened.”

The episode that made you move back to Texas. The episode where it was decided you could no longer safely live on your own.

“Because they weren’t working? Did you realize they weren’t working?”

You gave a faint shrug.

“It’s hard to tell because these meds don’t completely stop the tremors. Propranolol just reduces the severity of them.” 

Theo blinked at you and you could tell his brain was shifting, trying to understand.

“Shouldn’t you have been able to tell that the propo – fuck no, I’m not gonna try to say that. Anyways, shouldn’t you have been able to tell that the shakes were still severe? I saw your hands when you were in the hospital and that was…bad.”

You chuckled. Yeah, bad was certainly one way to describe it. 

“It’s been 7 years of this shit man. I lost track of how to differentiate the little details of how my hands shake.”

That wasn’t entirely true. But it was pointless to try and explain the side effects of your condition to someone who never experienced it. It’s one thing when you’re consoling a friend about a breakup, and you can use your own breakup as a way to sympathize. It’s another when your injury only happens in 0.05% of car accidents. Or how, with the severity of your DAI, you were protected to die 2 weeks after your inury. You defied those odds too. And you should be happy about that – but if you defied the odds, there weren’t many people out there who knew what you were talking about.

Theo went quiet for a moment. You had spent the last 5 years in Massachusetts, trying not to come back to Texas if you couldn’t help it. Your family understood, of course, that your home town carried the memories of the worst moment of your life. Walking back into Dallas was like walking into a cesspool of anxiety.

That meant you hadn’t seen your brother in person in 5 years. He was 40 when you left, and the jump from 40 to 45 seemed so miniscule. But now, sitting across from him in a dingy basement, you could see all of the details of the time you spent apart. His skin had a more leathery texture, and a few more wrikles decorating his forehead. He’s been an irrigation specialist for the last 25 years, spending most of his days out in the beating Texas sun. Your mom always scolded him to wear more sunscreen, and, you would never say this to his face, he clearly never listened to her. The effects were catching up to him. His hair had more streaks of gray in it. He was getting gray while you were still in Texas, but now he had enough that he could officially be classified as middle aged. 

“I just worry about you kid, you know that,” he ran a hand through his hair, “If I’m taking you in, I just want to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself too. I care for you and you care for you. That’s our deal.”

The right side of your mouth curved into a smile. 

“Then who’s taking care of you?”

He gave you a look like that was the silliest question in the world. 

“Have you met my husband? I am more than well taken care of.” 

“This is true. I’m still surprised dad forgave him after he chewed him out that first year at Thanksgiving.” 

Your parents were…not entirely supportive of Theo coming out. At first. He came out when he was 23, in the beginning of the 80s, in conservative Texas, to religious parents. It was a situation that was unfortunately not destined to go well. You don't remember much about that night that he told your parents because you were only 8, but you have a distinct memory of hiding at the top of the staircase in case you needed to step in between your dad and brother. You remember the shouting, the smashing glass,  and the sound of a hand hitting skin.

You never understood how he could stomach the sight of your parents after all of that, even though they finally came around almost a decade later. 

“Eddie will take care of you too, you know. We love to take care of people here, clearly. You’ll learn that we host a banger neighborhood get together. And Eddie has a book club that he hosts once a month.” 

“Oh yeah? Anyone I would know from when we were kids?” 

He paused, his eyes squinting a little bit as he thought about it. 

“Do you remember mom’s friend Karen Daley? Her kids fell somewhere between us, but they were in the neighborhood.” 

Your memory had worsened drastically after the accident. Dr. Madlock had just called it retrograde amnesia caused by your DAI. Diffuse Axonal Injury. It wasn’t that you forgot everything from your past, it was just that some things had a sort of fog over them. Did you remember Karen Daley? You recognized the name, but there was a fog floating around the image of her in your memory. 

“Oh sure.” 

Theo nodded, not seeing the confusion in your eyes.

 “She’s still here. And her kids. Oh, Jessica Thompson is still here, I think she was in your grade. She has 2 kids now. Tiffany Sandlers still here, I work with her husband…uh…Ryan Collins is still here, he’s taking care of his mom…”

He paused for a second, his eyes flicking to you.

“And, I…I feel like I should mention this sooner than later…”

You raised an eyebrow.

“Huh?”

“B-but you can’t shoot the messenger, alright–”

He was subconsiously moving the packed boxes in front of him like a shield from you when the basement door flew open and the musty room was illuminated by your brother-in-law Eddie. Illuminated literally; he had hair so ginger he could be classified as a leprechaun. Or a highlighter. 

“Hello!?” He grinned and dramatically stood in the doorway, “When the fuck did you get here!?”

Eddie always had this energy that made you feel like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world to be sad. It was somewhat problematic, how he refused to have a serious conversation, but with you it was almost a necessity. He was the only person who could make you laugh when you were in the hospital for a majority of 1996. He may have been the only person to make you laugh for the entirety of 1996, and his special talent?

Not talking about the accident. 

“Like 20 minutes ago. Theo’s been carrying my boxes in.”

Eddie stepped in and didn’t try to hide his distaste with the basement. He grimaced.

“Sorry we had to set you up here of all places. I think we can make this homely if we really put our heart into it, but we should probably focus on making it cleaner because why did I just step on a dry leaf?”

You blinked at him. 

“It’s your basement.” 

He looked at you like you were being ridiculous. Which, you kind of were. 

“I would like you to remember who you’re talking to. When’s the last time you think I was in this basement?” 

Theo chimed in, moving his protective boxes he set up.

“We call it our storage baement, but it’s more of a hoarding basement. We literally don’t come down here.”

“Ever,” Eddie nodded. “I’m surprised Theo even cleared this out in time for you. Not that I don’t love you enough to move these boxes for you…nah, I don’t love anyone enough to move these.”

He turned and popped open one of your poorly wrapped boxes. 

“How do you have so much shit anyway? Weren’t you living on a school teacher salary?”

He pulled out a sign from your old classroom door that said, “Welcome to First Grade!” with a little apple and pencil attached to it. 

“I still am living on a teacher salary,” you reminded him. “It’s just that the pay at a fancy private school in Massachuetts is a lot different than a Dallas public school. I’ll probably have to sell half of this stuff soon.”

After it was decided that you needed to move back home and leave your job in Masachusetts, you didn’t really know what you wanted to do anymore. Teaching was never really the dream, but were you in any capacity to actually follow your dreams? You thought you had given up on chasing what you wanted almost 10 years ago, and now that reckless, painful hope slithered its way back into your brain. 

It took you one night to shut that thought up.

You couldn’t even label your packing boxes because your hand was shaking so bad that it just made scribbles. How could you write–

“--are you excited to go back to working at Whitman?” Theo broke your haze. Eddie was still rummaging through all of your teacher decorations like this was hilarious in both a humiliating way and an adorable way. 

Annie J. Whitman Elementary School was one of the Dallas county public schools. It was the one you and your brother went to, and it just so happened to be the first school in the area with an open first grade teaching position. 

You tried so hard to get out of the area you grew up in. Moving home after you were known in your town for being the one who was going to get out and do something great was embarrassing enough. The least you could do is find a job that would limit your potential interactions with the people that you grew up with, or even worse. Your parents' friends.

“Theo, I want you to look me in the eyes and think about what you just asked me. If you were going to work at Whitman, would you be excited?” 

“No,” he didn’t hesitate, “But I’m also not a teacher by choice.” 

Your lips went into a straight line. You didn’t want to be a teacher either. It was just the only job that you were semi-capable of doing that still allowed you to engage with books and writing. 

“You also hate kids,” Eddie chimed in, pulling out your class photos from the school you used to teach at. “Aw! Wait, are these your babies?”

Theo frowned, “I don’t hate kids.”

You pushed yourself up, knees quivering slightly before walking over to Eddie and looking into the box he was emptying.

“It’s okay, kids annoy me too sometimes and I’m a teacher,” you took the class photo from Eddie and looked at the kids faces to figure out what year this was. 

“Oh! This was my second year teaching. See that little boy?” you leaned into Eddie and pointed to a little boy in the photo with chubby cheeks and dark hair. “He was the cutest thing, but he was the first case of a student I really struggled with. He had bad dyslexia, and I was completely on my own, no teaching assistant to pull him aside and do things slower.”

“So what did you do?” 

You smiled fondly at the photo.

“I mean, I was lucky that I worked at a private elementary school. And Massachusetts has a really solid educational system. I ended up setting him up with our reading interventionist.” 

Theo raised an eyebrow.

“Reading interventionist?”

You paused for a second before you remembered the learning gap here. In Masschusetts at least, there had been laws passed that allowed students with disabilities to receive equal access to education. The National Reading Panel had put forward several recommendations for how to help students with disabilities like dyslexia learn to read, one of them being to hire a reading interventionist. Someone who pulls students who struggle with reading to do personalized, one on one reading with them, along with phonics and vocab. 

They were life savers. Your closest friend in Mass was one of the interventionists at the school: Camilla.

“It’s like a job that helps kids with disabilities. Life changing really. I wonder if Whitman has one.”

You paused. 

“I take that back. They definitely do not have one.” 

You turned and looked back at Eddie who was now digging through even more of your belongings. 

“Can I help you? Do you realize it isn’t considered really polite to rummage through people's things?”

“I’m nosey!” he pulled out a bunch of photos and your stomach dropped. “Besides. I didn’t claim to try and be polite.”

You snatched the handful of photos out of his hand and put them back into the box. 

“Ok!” You clapped your hands together. “Time to let me decorate.” 

“You’re going to decorate by yourself?”

You exhaled and crossed your arms over your chest, trying to hide your body away. That was either a comment on your desire to be alone or a comment on your inability to decorate the room by yourself.

“I’ve been on a plane for 4 hours plus all of the driving to a from the airports, I’m just…I’m tired. Might take a nap on my new bed.”

Eddie stood up from the box he was kneeling in front of, grinning.

“It’s not very comfortable. I jumped on it after Theo set it up to make sure it could handle all sorts of activities.”

Theo grimaced.

“That’s why you were jumping on it?”

“Why did you think I was jumping on it?” 

“To test if I built it correctly,” he paused and shook his head fast, standing up. “I do not need to think about my sisters sex life, fuck. Please tell us if you’re having a guest over, yeah? I don’t need to know what you’re doing but…eugh.” 

He turned around and walked up the basement stairs. Eddie turned to you and ran his hand through his mop of orange hair. He was grinning, pleased that he put a tormenting thought in his brother's head. 

“Your welcome for getting him out of here. You sure you’re okay to hang down here?” 

You dropped your crossed arms and shoved your hands in your pockets. 

“I’m alright. Can you just make sure he doesn’t worry too much? I really do appreciate all he does to try and help me, but when people are on top of me acting like I’m incapable of doing anything it just–” 

He held up a hand.

“No need to explain yourself about something you feel. Why do you think I’ve never pestered you about everything?”

“Because you hate serious conversations.” 

He smirked and tilted his head. 

“Well…yes, but it’s more so because I know that you know your body better than anyone else. Fussing over you will make it worse. And you’re a tough girl, I trust that you know when to ask for help.”

You never needed to hear words more in your entire life. You took your hands out of your pockets and wrapped Eddie in an unfamiliar hug. 

Eddie wasn’t a sentimental guy, but he understood immediately. He hugged you back and ruffled your hair. 

“Rest. We usually have dinner around 6 if that’s good with you.” 

“That’s perfect. Thanks Eddie.”

He smiled and gave a faint nod before starting up the stairs.

“Oh! Did Theo give you the mail that came for you?”

You had changed your mailing address back to your brother's house a few weeks ago in case it took a while to process. Apparently it didn’t. They must have had weeks of your mail piling up. 

You shook your head and Eddie held up one finger to wait one second before quickly coming back down with a large manilla envelope from Whitman. 

“Looks fancy,” he shrugged and turned back upstairs, leaving you alone in the scary basement.

You stood there for a moment, letting the reality of your situation absorb into you like the asbestos that was probably in the air. 

10 years ago you thought you would be in New York right now. Working on your second best-seller. Maybe the first one got a movie deal, and you would be book signings all weekend, and you’d be interviewed in the New Yorker and–

Well… you’d be happy.

Now, you never published your novel. You aren’t living in New York – you’re back in the same bum fuck town you grew up in. You’re stuck having to watch the adaptations of your favorite books be turned into movies and wonder who you would cast in your novel's movie. You have to spend your nights reading your old journals but not being able to write in them. You spend most of your weekends inside because your flare ups get so bad. 

You cry a lot. 

You push people away. 

You’ve been operating as a shell of yourself for almost a decade. 

Inhaling, you looked at the envelope in your hands and opened it, sitting on the cold floor instead of the bed. It was your class roster for the year and some notes on allergies. You always enjoyed this part of teaching – making predictions about who these students were. Some teachers you knew from the Boston school would say that they didn’t like to do that because they want to go into the year with a fresh slate. You tried your first few years to listen to your elders, but you found that that often left you disappointed when the kids didn’t behave as well as you thought. Now, if you predicted John would be a pain and he was a sweetheart, you were happy. You were actually winning by making judgments about people. 

You used your index finger to focus on the names, but your hand quickly started to tremble with how much focus you were putting on it. You dropped it and pressed your hand to the floor to steady it and continued to read the names. 

1.Michael Ackhurst

2. Joshua Austin

3. Ashley Dadford

4.David Fernandes

5. Stephanie Field

6. Lauren Galley 

7. Austin Gallagher

8. Katherine Holbert

9. Brody Kauffeld

10. Sarah Miller

11. Morgan Murdock–

10. Sarah Miller

10. Sarah Miller

10. Sarah Miller

10. Sarah Miller

Your brain was glitching, rereading her name with a different emphasis on each syllable. Were you that fucked up that you couldn’t even look at one of the most popular names in the world without feeling your heart beat faster every second? Without your face flushing red with anger?

No. This was silly.

The Joel Miller you knew hated children. He would scowl every time he had to pick up his little brother Tommy from the park and had to see younger kids. The last you heard of Joel Miller, he moved to Austin with his girlfriend Isla.  Hell, the Joel you knew never would have stayed with one woman for long enough to have a baby. 

This couldn’t be Joel Millers kid. 

And if it was? You were in trouble.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

September 1990

You spent nearly every afternoon in the library. 

It wasn’t like you didn’t have friends. They just did sports after school, and you had tried that world out afew years ago…not your cup of tea. If you wanted to see your friends, you’d see them on the weekends or during school.

Now that you had your own car, your parents didn’t really care what you did after school so long as you were home by 6 for dinner. But those hours went by so quickly.

You had been sitting there long enough that the light had slowly crawled across the floor and settled over your legs, warming the denim of your jeans while you worked through the impossible decision in front of you.

7 books. 

You were only allowed to take home 3. It was some bullshit rule at your local library because some people would take home a bunch of books and then never bring them back. It was an unfair rule to people like you who could bang through 3 books in a few days. 

You sat cross-legged in the aisle with three books open around you and the rest stacked beside your knee, flipping between the first pages of each one like a scientist running a very serious experiment. The opening line mattered. A bad first paragraph usually meant the entire book was a waste of time. You knew what you liked. 

You were halfway through rereading the first paragraph of one of the books when a static crackled over you:

“Library closes in 15 minutes for senior center event.”

You groaned – fucking senior center. You forgot they had events every other Wednesday. But, you ignored the warning and finished trying to pick one out. Your finger traced the spine of another paperback as you debated whether the author deserved a chance. You had just turned the first page when a shadow stretched across the carpet in front of you.

You had frequently been snapped at by the librarians for sitting on the floor and creating a safety hazard, so you assumed it was one of them. You opened your mouth to apologize, but when you looked up, it wasn’t the librarian at all. 

It was...Joel Miller?

Joel Miller who (somehow) graduated last spring. You hadn’t seen him in months. Not that you saw him much anyway, he just always drifted around in high school, in and out of the same classes you took. 

You were never a fan of his. He was usually sitting in the back with his boots kicked up against the desk, talking loudly about whatever band he was currently obsessed with. He was convinced that he was going to be a rockstar but you’d never actually heard him play an instrument or sing. He just talked.

More than once you had heard him complain about English class, saying stuff like, “Why the hell do we gotta read this crap? We aren’t living in the 1500s anymore.”

And now, for some reason, he was standing above you, one eyebrow raised, looking at your pile of books. 

“You building a fortress?”

You stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out what was happening. Were you not sleeping enough again? Why was Joel Miller who never spoke to you before trying to make casual conversation? 

“Um…I’m just, uh, deciding which 3 I want to check out.”

He leaned against the bookshelf next to you, one eyebrow still raised like this was amusing to him. 

“You can read that many books?”

You scoffed at him, looking at him like that was stupidest question you ever heard. 

“Yes? I’m confused. Can I help you with something?”

He ignored your question and continued to probe you.

“You read these for fun?”

You just made a ‘mhm’ noise. You really just wanted to pick out your books before the librarians started kicking people out. 

He let out a low whistle.

“Jesus.”

Your eyebrows pulled together.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” he said, though there was a faint grin tugging at his mouth. “Just didn’t know people actually did that.”

You stared at him for a moment.

“You’re standing in a library.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but I’m not here for that.”

Ah. That makes more sense. 

“Figured. You know I remember you from our American Classics course last year. You never did the readings.”

He rolled his lips in and smiled softly. 

“And you always did do the readings. I remember you too. I could tell you were into that class, fuckin’ book worm.” 

You thought he was making fun of you at first, but there was no sarcasm in his voice. You motioned to the pile of books. 

“Clearly. What are you doing back in the library if you graduated? I thought you were gonna move to Hollywood and be Mr. Rockstar or something.”

Joel’s smile dropped slightly and he rubbed the back of his neck, turning pink.

“My little brother’s in the kids section,” he said. “Dad said I had to pick him up, I just…I just recognized you.”

Right, there was another Miller. He was younger, still in elementary school last time you saw him. The 8th graders used to do reading buddies with the 3rd graders and you had been partnered up with someone in his class. What was his name…Tommy maybe? Johnny?

“I forgot there were more of you.”

He looked surprised. 

“You’ve met Tommy?”

Knew it. 

“Oh years ago,” you shrugged, “In some 8th grade/3rd grade reading buddies group.”

You looked down and noticed a book was hanging from his hands. You frowned slightly.

“You’re holding a book.”

Joel glanced down at it like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Oh. Yeah.”

It was a random mystery novel. You didn’t recognize it, but that wasn’t your go to genre. You were more of a literary fiction type of girl.

He turned it over in his hands.

“I was thinkin’ about tryin’ one.”

Your eyebrows furrowed.

“Trying…what?”

“A book.”

You studied him for a moment, trying to decide if he was messing with you. You still couldn’t wrap your mind around the fact that you were having a friendly conversation with him right now.

“You always complained about reading in class…like, loudly. You made it everyones business that you didn’t want to do the work.”

He looked somewhat offended by that, as if it wasn’t the absolute truth.

“I did not complain every day.”

“Every other day then.”

Joel let out a quiet laugh in acceptance.

“Alright, fair.”

He held up the paperback slightly.

“So,” he said. “Which one’s good? I picked this one because the cover looked cool.”

“You want my recommendation.”

“Well,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the small pile surrounding you, “you look like you know what you’re doin’.”

You hesitated at his kindness. Part of you suspected he was just looking for something to tease you about later, but another part of you was curious why he had stopped in the aisle at all. He didn’t know you.

You reached for one of the books beside your knee and held it out: Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Joel took it.

His eyes dropped to the cover, then they flicked back up to you, then back to the cover again.

“…this one got less words in it?”

You couldn’t hold in your laugh. 

“It’s less than 200 pages!”

He laughed right along with you.

“That’s still a lot of pages!”

You grinned at him, still not understanding how on earth you were speaking to Joel Miller right now. 

Continue

Elise returned and set the mugs down, her eyes darting between you and Marcus with a look that was far too perceptive for your comfort. It felt almost as if you were meeting his mother, despite the fact that she was several years younger than Marcus himself. The way she was treating you was refreshing, as if you weren’t a royal but a normal 24 year old girl. She treated you like someone who had survived the same harsh world her brother had.

"So," Elise started, leaning her chin on her hand, giving a teasing smile. "How is he as a guard? I imagine he’s terribly brooding. He used to practice that intimidating look in the mirror when he was a teenager, trying to look like the veteran soldiers in the square."

You felt a laugh bubble up.

"He is very dedicated to brooding. Sometimes I think he’s forgotten how to move his facial muscles entirely. I’ve always wondered how they do that."

"Hey," Marcus feigned hurt. He shifted Henri in his arms, the baby letting out a soft sigh against his chest. "I’m right here."

"Oh, we know you're there. You're hard to miss. You take up half the kitchen," Elise waved a hand dismissively before turning back to you."He was so nervous when he got assignment to watch you, you know. When he was told he had to guard the Princess, he spent three days cleaning his boots. I told him, 'Marcus, she’s a just a person, but he wouldn't listen. It’s a shame all of that went to waste. I heard Duke Thomas relieved him of the assignment."

You glanced at Marcus, who was suddenly very focused on the way Henri’s tiny fingers were curled around his thumb. Something inside you burned at the sight of such a big man holding such a small person. 

 "He didn't tell me that," you said quitely, your heart doing a strange, fluttering roll. "He mostly just worries about everything."

"I do not worry about everything" Marcus sounded a bit embarrassed. "I worry about you."

"He's always been like this," she leaned in like she was telling a secret. "Protecting things. When we were little, we came across a bunny with a horn in its foot, and Marcus sat in the dirt, whispering to it until it let him pull it out. He’s got a soft heart, even if he tries to bury it under that stiff uniform and all those scary scars."

You looked at Marcus in a new way. This was the man who had seen you scream, who had held you while you thrashed through nightmares of the French cells, and he was now being teased by his sister while an infant slept on his chest.

"I think the uniform is just a disguise," you said to Elise, but your eyes remained locked with Marcus’s. "Underneath, he’s just a man who worries too much about everyone else."

"I worry about the things that matter," he replied.

"See?" Elise chirped, reaching over to pat your hand. Her skin was rough from all of the work she did at home. "Hopeless. But he’s a good man to have in your corner. Even if he does smell a bit like gun oil. "

"I do not smell like gunoil.”

"You do," you and Elise said in perfect unison.

The room erupted into quiet laughter, a sound so foreign to your ears that it almost felt like a dream. Is this what it felt like to have people who love you? Who enjoy having conversations with you?

"Tell me," you felt a spark of playfulness you thought had died in France. "What was he like as a boy? Did he always stand so straight, or did he ever actually get into trouble?"

Elise’s eyes lit up. "Oh, let me tell you about the time he tried to 'liberate' the baker’s prize pig because he thought it looked lonely..."

"Elise, don't," Marcus groaned, but he didn't move to stop her. He just sat there, rocking Henri, watching the two of you bond with a look of such profound, quiet peace on his face that it was clear he didn't mind being the target of the joke at all. As long as you were laughing, he would let his sister tell every embarrassing story she had.

She rested her elbows on the scarred wood of the table, ignoring the way the steam from her tea curled around her face. Her voice dropped to a theatrical whisper.

"Oh, the pig…Marcus was fourteen, and he’d developed this... well, this intensity even back then. He took everything so seriously. The old man who lived in the home down the ay from us  had this pig, a massive, grunting thing. She was supposed to be the prize of the autumn fair, but Marcus decided she looked 'melancholy.'"

"She was pacing. Pigs shouldn't pace like that. It wasn't natural."

"He decided she wanted to see the river," Elise ignored him. "So, in the middle of the night, this boy sneaks out with a pocket full of dried apples. He leads the pig - who, mind you, weighed three times as much as he did - through the center of the village. He didn't realize that the pig wasn't sad; she was just hungry. And she knew exactly where the bakery was."

You laughed out loud and looked at Marcus, trying to imagine the stoic Captain of the Guard as a scrawny fourteen-year-old being dragged through the streets by a prize-winning animal.

"Did she make it to the river?" you asked, leaning forward, the pain in your arm momentarily forgotten.

"She made it to the bakery's flour stores," Elise laughed, clapping her hands together. "Marcus tried to pull her back, but she knocked him right into a barrel of rye flour. When the baker woke up, he found a white, ghostly boy wrestling with a very content, very flour-covered pig. Marcus spent the next month scrubbing the baker's floors to pay for the wasted grain."

"I learned a valuable lesson that day," Marcus said, finally looking up from Henri. "I learned that some things don't want to be saved, and the ones that do usually require a lot more than a pocket full of apples."

"And he’s been 'saving' things ever since," Elise reached over to pat Marcus’s hand. "He’s stubborn, Princess. Once he decides someone is under his protection, the heavens themselves couldn't move him. He was like that with me, and he’s like that with Henri."

She paused, her gaze dropping to the clean white bandage she’d just pinned to your arm. "And he’s clearly like that with you. I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you when you aren't looking."

He was blushing now, the heat rising all the way to the tips of his ears.

"Elise.” 

"What? It’s true," she teased, turning back to you with a wink. "He used to tell me he was just doing his duty. 'The Princess is a national asset, Elise. The King requires her safety, Elise.' And then one day, he stops talking about assets and starts talking about... well, about how you look when the sun hits the gardens, and how he wishes he could take the nightmares out of your head and put them in his own."

You felt the breath hitch in your throat. You looked at Marcus and you didn't see the Captain of the Guard. You saw the boy who walked the pig to the river. You saw the man who had been counting the seconds until he could get you to this kitchen.

"You talk too much," Marcus muttered shyly, though he reached out with his free hand and covered yours on the table. His thumb traced a circle over your knuckles.

"I talk exactly enough," Elise countered, rising to her feet to check the stew. "Now, stay for a bowl. It’s not palace food…it actually tastes like something…and Marcus needs to learn how to relax his shoulders before you two head back to that fortress."

"I'd love some stew," you said with complete and utter certainty, something you never knew before.

The sound of the front door clicking shut echoed in the kitchen. Elise had gone to the market to get a fresh wheel of cheese and some bread. You had insisted you could go but she declined. It was too dangerous for you to go into town, even with Marcus’s cloak. Now it was just you, Marucs, and a sleeping Henri. He was standing by the hearth, little Henri having been transferred back to his cradle upstairs, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the flickering firelight. 

Moments ago, he had been cradling an infant, and the sight of those massive hands holding something so fragile had done something wicked to your pulse. Seeing him as a protector of a life was a brand of comfort so deep it felt indistinguishable from desire. In your world, safety was a luxury, and Marcus was the only one who provided it; you didn't just want his protection, you wanted to swallow it whole.

It seemed like he was feeling the heat too; he was gripping the fireplace mantel, his knuckles white.

The need for him was a clawing hunger that only burned hotter because of how few Sundays you had together. You were needy for his touch, starving for the erasure only he could provide. You wanted to overwrite the memory of Adonis’s attack on you with the possessive heat of a man who actually loved you.

You crossed the kitchen with a slight limp. Every step hurt; ever since France, your pain tolerance sky rocketed, so if you felt pain now, that was bad. 

"Marcus," you whispered, trying not to wake the baby. 

He turned, his eyes clouded with a protective agony as they tracked the white bandage on your arm. It was like he knew what you craved from him. 

"We can't. Not while you’re hurt. I won't risk it."

"Don't tell me what I can't do," you murmured, sliding your hands up to find the burning skin of his neck. "I’m starving for you. Seeing you with that baby... seeing how you hold things you care about... touch me, Marcus. I need to feel that same weight on me baby please…"

"I saw what he did," he breathed, his hands twitching at his sides but refusing to lift. "If I touch you, I might make it worse. I might reopen those wounds."

"You could never," you insisted, pressing your chest against his until you could feel the hard lines of his body. His eyes flickered down to your chest. "He hurts me to keep me small. You take me to make me whole. I don't want to be a princess. I want to be yours. Completely and filthily yours."

He rolled his lips in and groaned. He was so disciplined until it came to you.

"Okay," his eyes snapped up. "But if we do this, we do it in a way where I can't fail you. Go to the guest room. There are silk scarves in the wardrobe. You’re going to tie my hands to the bedposts."

Your lips parted and you couldn’t fight the stutter.

 "Wha…t-tie – Marcus?"

"Tie me up," he repeated like that wasn’t an insane ask of you. "I won't have my hands on you today. I won't risk gripping those bruises too tight when I stop thinking straight. You’re going to be the one in control. You’re going to take exactly what you need, and I’m going to be forced to just take it from you."

"Go," he commanded, his eyes burning with a heat that felt like it could melt lead.

You didn't hesitate. You moved down the hall, breathing hard from your chest to your cunt. The scarves were an easy find in the top shelf of the wardrobe. Your fingers trembled as you pulled them out.

Marcus entered a moment later like he wanted you to find the scarves and think about what you wanted to do with him before he came inside. He sat on the edge of the bed, back straight, eyes locked onto yours before holding out his wrists and offering absolute submission.

You took them with shaky hands, his skin searing yours. You led his hands to the sturdy wooden posts, wrapping the silk tightly, securing him with knots that wouldn't slip. He watched you the entire time, his own chest heaving as if it turned him on to see you dominate him. When you were finished, he was bound, his broad chest strained against his shirt, his arms stretched wide. He was at your mercy. No one had ever been at your mercy before. 

"Now," he cleared his throat. "Take what you want my love. Don't be gentle."

You stood back, drinking in the sight of him. Did you know what you wanted? You were never in control like this before, sexually or emotionally or physically. And if you ever were taking the lead with Antoine during sex, it was because he wanted it. If you failed to please him, your cover was blown.

“Just breathe,” Marcus must have seen the hesitation in your eyes. “No one is rushing you. You do what feels right.”

Without ruminating too much, you unlaced your dress and let it fall to the floor. You stood before him in nothing but your chemise and the white bandage on your arm. 

You climbed onto the bed, straddling his lap, the friction of his trousers against your bare skin sending a jolt of fire through you. You paused for a moment before holding the hem of your chemise and pulling it over your head, now completely nude.

 You leaned in, your lips ghosting over the pulse point in his neck. The warmth of the fire in the parlour radiated into the room, but your nipples still peaked anyway from the sexual adrenaline that coursed through you.

"I’ve been waiting all week for this," you whispered in his ear."And I’m going to take every bit of comfort you have to give."

You leaned back from his chest, just enough to catch the wreckage of his expression. His pupils were so blown they made his eyes look black with hunger. The power was starting to rush through your veins felt like a drug.

You decided you wanted to start slow, exploring his body with your fingertips. Your hands rested on his chest, feeling the thud of his heart hammering against the worn fabric of his shirt. Without moving your hands, you leaned forward, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses along the line of his jaw, tasting the salt of his skin. He groaned, just at the way it felt for your lips to graze the skin below his jaw.

"You taste so good," you whispered in his ear. "My brave, strong protector... even bound, you’re the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen."

You grinded your hips against him and you saw the silks pull slightly - they were doing their job restraining all of him. You could feel him get hard through his trousers and the right side of your lips twitched up. It was kind of a victory, knowing you could elicit this kind of desperate reaction from a man who usually stood unshakable. 

You stopped kissing him for a moment, but kept your nose practically grazing his. The gentle teasing wasn't enough to drown out the noise of the palace. The need for something more visceral to anchor you to the present, was a fire in your blood. You wanted to see him lose himself, to see your man completely undone by his love for you.

You shifted, moving to kneel between his spread legs. Your hand trailed down his chest, over each muscle on his stomach, until it reached the waistband of his trousers.

"Let's see how much of me you can take," you grinned and undid his trousers without removing your eyes from him. The moment you freed him, he sprang into your hand, hot and heavy and already leaking in a way that looked almost painful. He was beautiful like this, so…vulnerable, so utterly yours. 

You began to stroke him like he showed you the day in the forest, going so slow you could feel every vein of him. Your thumb brushed over the sensitive head, spreading the bead of moisture there like a sacred oil. You wanted to bless yourself with it…and you could do anything you wanted. So you let the bead of come transition to your finger and you crossed your heart, swearing his affection over your heart.

 He moaned so loudly you almost scolded him so the baby could stay asleep. His hips bucked up into your hand, seeking the friction that only you could provide.

"Patience," you tsked softly, your grip tightening just enough to make him gasp. "You gave yourself to me today. Let me worship you."

You continued your giddy torture, your hand gliding up and down his length, faster as he grew more aroused and sweatier. You could see his balls tightening and the way his muscles strained as he fought the urge to thrust into your hand, to take back the control.

But now that you knew what it felt like to be in control, you wanted more. You wanted to push him to the very edge of his devotion.

"You wanted to make sure you couldn't hurt me. But you never realized how much power you were giving me to ruin you."

And with that, your free hand moved lower, cupping the weight of his balls in your palm. They were warm and tight, drawn up in a way that bordered on agony. You rolled them gently, and he let out a choked moan, his head falling back against the pillows.

"My lady," he gasped. "What are you - "

His words were cut off as your fingers tightened around him. You squeezed, just enough to blur the line between pleasure and a reminder to be submissive.

"God," he snarled, his back arching off the bed. His entire body went rigid, a strangled cry tearing from his throat. The silk scarves strained against the bedposts as he fought against his restraints, his knuckles turning white. 

"Who do you belong to, Marcus?" 

"To you," he choked out, his eyes squeezed shut as he fought for air. "Only you. God, I'm yours."

"Good boy," you cooed, finally easing your grip, your fingers returning to a light caress. “Bet you regret letting me do this huh?”

You giggled before leaning in to kiss him, not once, not twice, but three times.

As you watched him whimper and thrash, the heat in your own body ignited. You had pushed him to the edge, and in doing so, had pushed yourself there as well. 

You released his cock, and it slapped against his stomach, angry and twitching. He was angry too, letting out a choked sound of protest, his eyes flying open to meet yours, wide with disbelief.

"Don't stop," he begged. "Love, please... God, don't stop."

"I'm not stopping," you corrected. "I'm just changing the game. We have so little time together…I'm not going to waste a single second of it."

You swung your leg over his muscle heavy thigh, straddling it. You ached so bad that just the contact of his skin on your clit made you sharply inhale. You braced your hands on his shoulders, your nails digging into the hard muscle just enough to make him gasp, to leave your own small marks on him.

"Watch me. I want you to watch me. I want you to see what you do to me. I want you to see exactly what you're missing when the palace walls stand between us."

You started with a slow grind on his thigh and your cunt was memorizing each line of muscle in it. Your eyes rolled back and you whimpered softly at how good the friction felt. 

His eyes were locked on you so intensely it felt like he was physically touching you. His eyes traced the line of your throat as you threw your head back, followed the sway of your breasts with each rock of your hips, and fixated on the place where your body met his, where you were using him so shamelessly. 

"Look at you," he shook his head, smiling."You’re so beautiful."

You increased your pace just slightly, your movements becoming more demanding. You were chasing your own pleasure, using his body for your own gratification, and the feeling was more than liberating.  

You could feel the orgasm coiling in your belly. You were so close, so close to the edge, and you wanted him to be there with you in spirit/

"Tell me…Tell me what you want to do to me."

"I want to flip you over and bury my face between your legs," he choked out immediately. "I want to taste you on my tongue until you're screaming my name. I want to feel you come against my mouth, and then I want to fuck you until you can't remember your own, only mine."

You gave yourself over to the pleasure, your body stuttering with how good you felt. You rode his thigh, your hips bucking, your moans growing louder, more frantic. The tension in your belly snapped, and you came with a loud cry that, thank god, didn’t wake the baby.

For a long moment, the world went white and a blinding wave of pleasure washed over you, leaving you breathless and trembling.  He was still hard, still aching, still desperate for his own release, but he was also patient.

You took a moment to catch your breath, to let the tremors subside. Then, you pushed yourself up, your arms trembling slightly, and looked down at him. The look on his face was a mixture of awe, devotion, and a desperate, hungry need that took your breath away. His eyes were glazed, his lips parted, his face flushed.

"Please," he whispered, sounding like he was about to cry. "I'll do anything. Just... please."

"Not yet," you purred. "You wanted to be at my mercy. This is what mercy looks like. Now... I'm going to ride your other thigh, and you're going to watch me come again. And you're not going to make a sound unless I tell you to. Do you understand me, Marcus?"

He stared at you, shocked at how well you were embracing this. He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing, and then he surrendered.

You lifted yourself off his thigh, but your limbs felt like they were made of liquid, your body still humming with the aftershocks of a pleasure so profound it felt like a holy erasure. You were hypersensitive, every nerve ending raw and exposed to the quiet sanctuary of the room. The simple act of shifting your weight sent a jolt through you.

You lowered yourself onto his other thigh and you let out a soft, breathy moan, your body trembling with the overwhelming sensation. You were dripping down his thigh, but it was a claim you were more than happy to stake on the only man who had ever truly cherished you.

"God, you feel... so good. You're the only thing that's ever felt this good."

You began to move again, the friction was almost too much this time. You were overstimulated, your body still vibrating from before. He was watching you, completely and utterly captivated, his entire being focused on you, on the soul-deep pleasure you were taking from him.

You increased your pace, feeling the tension coiling in your belly again. 

"Tell me," you moaned. "Tell me what you see when you look at me like this."

"I see my entire world," he groaned out, “I want to worship you until neither of us can remember the palace exists."

This time, the pleasure was even more intense, so much so you swore you passed out for a moment. You collapsed against him, your head resting on his chest. You took a moment to catch your breath, letting the tremors subside as you basked in the absolute security of his bound arms. You looked up at him, your heart in your eyes, and saw the face of a man who would wait a thousand lifetimes just to see you smile like this.

Finally, you pushed yourself up, your arms trembling with post-ecstasy weakness. You looked down at him, and the sight stole the remaining air from your lungs.

He was a wreck. His eyes were glazed and bloodshot, fixed on you. His jaw was hanging open, his breath coming in pathetic hitches that sounded more like whimpers than exhales. And then you saw them - shimmering tears tracing paths down his flushed cheeks, disappearing into the dark stubble of his jaw. He looked utterly broken, a lethal weapon reduced to a shaking, weeping mess at your feet.

It was so attractive.

"Please," he whispered again, the word breaking into a sob. "Please... I can't... I can't breathe... I'm yours... just... please..."

The hour Elise had granted you was far from over. You leaned in and you could feel him trembling violently, the bedframe creaking under the force of his shivers.

With a final kiss on his jaw, you shifted down. You moved back to the space between his spread legs. His cock was screaming at you, begging to be touched, begging to be relieved.

You took him into your mouth without warning.

He let out a wail that was immediately muffled by his own gritted teeth. You started with one slow bob of your head. You swirled your tongue around the tip, and Marcus’s head thrashed back against the headboard, his eyes rolling back into his head. He was moaning back to back now like a song.

"Patience," you chided again softly, your hand coming up to rest on his thigh. The muscle there was jumping and twitching the way his cock was.

Every time you swallowed, every time your tongue flicked against him, a fresh sob broke from his throat.You could feel the tears from his face falling onto the pillow, his moaning turning into wet gasps.

You took him even deeper, letting yourself gag slightly. You swallowed around him, your throat contracting. You were letting him go.

It wasn't a clean release; it was an explosion that left him sobbing. The silk scarves groaned and creaked as he strained against them, his knuckles turning white as he fought for air. You swallowed every drop, your eyes never leaving his.

You crawled back up his body, resting your head on his chest, listening to the slow, thunderous deceleration of his heart. 

That was fun.

The walk back to the palace was a walk back to reality. The borrowed dress had been swapped back for your emerald velvet riding habit, the silk scarves returned to the wardrobe, and the scent of Elise’s lavender-tinged home replaced by the dampness of the palace.

Marcus had left you at the edge of the gardens, just where the wild pines met the manicured hedges. Since it was still technically his day off, he was headed back to the city to help Elise settle Henri for the night. He had lingered for a moment, his hand squeezing yours. He looked like the General again, but the way his eyes softened as he watched you walk away was a secret kept between the two of you.

As you crossed the threshold of the side entrance, something felt wrong. You expected the usual: a servant waiting to escort you to your room, perhaps a quiet hallway where you could retreat and touch the lingering heat on your skin.

But the hallway was not empty.

The oak doors leading to the King’s private wing were thrown open, and your father stood there.

King Damian didn't look like a man who had been resting. This was abnormal. The King did not fetch his daughter, he summoned her through layers of bureaucracy and notes. For him to be standing here, waiting, felt like a noose tightening.

"The fresh air seems to have done little for your constitution," your father said in a way that usually preceded a strike. "You look... disheveled.."

You slipped instantly back into the vacant, distant tone of your act. You let your gaze wander to a tapestry on the wall, your body swaying slightly as if you weren't entirely present. "The wind was high, Father. It talks too loud sometimes."

"Is that so?" Damian stepped forward, the sound of his boots echoing like a death knell. He stopped inches from you. "I find it curious that your condition only seems to worsen when you are away from my sight. And more curious still that my General is nowhere to be found."

"It is his Sunday," your voice trembled, part act, part raw fear. "He is... elsewhere."

"Indeed." 

The King’s smile didn't reach his eyes. It was a baring of teeth like an animal. He turned, gesturing toward the darkness of his private chambers, the silence of the wing suddenly feeling like an interrogation room.

"Come. I find myself in a talking mood," he murmured, his eyes locking onto yours with a terrifying clarity. "I think it’s time we had a little chat about Marcus."

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